Adam Plachetka to perform Mozart and Salieri live online from Ostrava

Prague born singer Adam Plachetka will perform operatic arias in Ostrava without an audience as part of the Leoš Janáček International Music Festival. The November 29 concert will be streamed live over Facebook and the festival website, and a recording will be broadcast during the Christmas holidays.

For the concert from Ostrava, he will be accompanied by the Czech Ensemble Baroque, conducted by Roman Válek. TV moderator Jiří Vejvoda will introduce the concert, which will be streamed from the city’s Evangelical Church of Christ.

The musical program will explore the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, with over a dozen selections from their works. The featured Salieri arias will be heard in Ostrava for the first time, according to the organizers. A highly fictionalized account of the Mozart – Salieri rivalry was told in Miloš Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus.

“Covid-19 has thwarted most of the Leoš Janáček's International Music Festival’s plans for this year,” festival director Jaromír Javůrek said in a press release. But at least this one highlight will still take place.

“I cordially invite you to a live broadcast of the concert by Adam Plachetka, which will be offered at least online, on November 29 from 7 pm and then also on December 26 from noon on Czech Radio,” Javůrek said.

People can watch the live streams for free. Those who bought tickets to the sold-out concert, when it was initially planned with an audience, can get refunds.

Plachetka is enthusiastic about the event. “I am very pleased that the Leoš Janáček Festival managed, despite everything, to arrange at least the broadcast and recording of our concert. Of course, we would rather play for a live audience, but at the moment, playing a program for cameras and radio recording will be a small miracle. I believe that everything will work out and I look forward to seeing Ostrava,” Plachetka said.

Festival director Javůrek is already planning for next year, when hopefully the situation for live performances will be better. “The support of the audience and all the festival partners has been a great boost for the organizers during this difficult period, for which we sincerely thank them. Due to that, we have already been able to prepare an attractive program for the next festival year, which will take place from May 27 to July 1, 2021, and will be full of large, mostly symphonic concerts,” Javůrek said.

Plachetka studied at a music conservatory in Prague. He made his debut at the National Theatre in Prague in 2005, and has returned several times to perform in operas by Mozart including Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, and Così fan tutte, as well as many operas by other composers.

He became a member of the ensemble at the Wiener Staatsoper in Austria in 2010. Aside from the Metropolitan Opera, he has also appeared at the Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, London’s Royal Opera House, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Berlin’s Deutsche Oper and Deutsche Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala Milan, and other venues.