Inspired by his love for Kamila Stösslová, Janáček had a particularly creative period during the last part of his life. Kát’a Kabanová bears the mark of this relationship: ‘It was vital for me to experience an excessive love in order to compose this opera. During my work, your image fused before my eyes with that of Kát’a Kabanová.’ Janáček’s libretto finds its inspiration in the Russian play The Storm, written by Ostrovsky: through a love affair, a young woman tries to escape a stifling environment and marriage. But she is rejected by those around her and is smitten with remorse, and throws herself in the river. In her staging of the work, Andrea Breth summons the inner world of a fragile Kát’a Kabanová, where the social and psychological pressure is accompanied by a feeling of losing the past. Leo Hussain returns to La Monnaie following his remarkable debut in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre in 2009.