Janáček: The Excursions of Mr Brouček

An Absurd Dream

Janáček rarely wrote comic operas. But The Excursions of Mr Brouček is one.

The protagonist, Mr Brouček, is a minor Prague landowner—a vain, boastful, foolish yet endearing philistine. Drunk, he dreams two absurd dreams: flying to the Moon, and being swept back to the 15th-century Hussite Wars.

This is a “baffling but beautiful” opera—as The Guardian review put it.

The Moon’s Satire

In the first dream, Brouček arrives on the Moon. Its inhabitants are aesthetes detached from reality, caring only for art and beauty, ignorant of the mundane world.

Janáček here uses satire to contrast Brouček’s crude pragmatism with the lunar people’s ethereal emptiness—two extremes, unable to understand each other.

The Seriousness of the Hussites

The second dream is more complex. Brouček is swept into the 15th-century Hussite Wars—a conflict over Czech national faith and freedom.

Here the opera’s satire turns serious. Brouček, a philistine who only wants a comfortable life, seems tiny and pathetic among people fighting for ideals.

This lifts the whole work from mere comedy to a profound reflection on “ideals and reality.”

Rattle Embraces the Bizarre

This recording by Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra was released by LSO Live in 2026.

The Guardian described Rattle as “embracing the baffling but beautiful opera’s bizarre charms.”

Rattle doesn’t play this comic opera as a frivolous farce. He preserves the serious undercurrent of Janáček’s music, while letting the absurd passages glimmer with humor.

Why Listen

Among Janáček’s operas, Jenůfa and Kát’a Kabanová are better known, but Brouček reveals his lesser-known side—humor, fantasy, and social observation.

For Janáček fans, this is an unmissable recording. For newcomers, it is an entertaining, unconventional alternative to typical opera.

Further Listening

If you love Janáček, Rattle’s Jenůfa is a more dramatic masterpiece. And his Mahler Seventh offers another musical landscape.