One year into the role, the Royal Opera’s music director is taking on the challenge of Parsifal, and, next season, the Ring Cycle. I’m here, and I am courageous says the conductor

‘You can choose the cautious option – or you can take the full risk and just go and conduct. Maybe I would like the cautious option, but I never choose it.” Jakub Hrůša learned to trust his instincts at the Royal Opera House back in 2022 when he conducted his first ever Wagner opera – Lohengrin – there, describing the experience as “one of the absolute highlights of my life”. Now he’s a year into his role as the house’s music director and about to conduct his first Parsifal, staged by Evgeny Titov. And next season there’ll be yet more Wagner firsts when he conducts complete cycles of the Ring as staged by Barrie Kosky. For most conductors, this would be a gradual process, adding the four Ring operas to their repertoire one by one, but not for Hrůša: he’ll be conducting his first Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung all in the space of a week.

“Is it too bold? I find it wonderful!” he says. “I could have chosen to do it in my own way, in 10 years’ time, somewhere else – but I’m here, I’m the music director, the Ring should be done and wants to be done in its entirety, and I am courageous.”

Bonnet/Dutrieux/Czech Philharmonic/Vasilek
(Animal Music)
Honegger’s multifaceted 1935 composition about the French saint is brought to life in spine-tingling detail by Lukáš Vasilek, the Czech Philharmonic and actors and musicians

Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher is a neglected masterpiece. Composed in 1935 to a text by Paul Claudel, it reviews the French saint’s life in flashback as she awaits execution. Eleven episodes explore her physical and mental trials, with actors playing Jeanne and her confidant Frère Dominique alongside a cast of solo singers and full chorus. Honegger’s score blends medieval modes and folk melody with Stravinskian neoclassicism and jazz, while his eclectic orchestration includes three saxophones, pianos and the eerie wail of the ondes Martenot.

This new recording gets everything right. Lukáš Vasilek directs the Czech Philharmonic in a dramatically nuanced and scrupulously engineered account. Set pieces land body blows. Jeanne’s examination before a tribunal of anthropomorphic animals sizzles with faux-Hollywood fanfares and a scabrous comedic energy. Kyle van Schoonhoven has fun as Porcus, the pig elected to preside over her trial. The game of cards, where blase English and French nobility use her as a bargaining chip, is razor-sharp. The Prague Philharmonic Choir and Children’s Choir are splendidly muscular. Hovering over it all are Jeanne’s otherworldly voices – the Virgin, Sainte Catherine and Sainte Marguerite – captured here in spine-tingling detail.