Whoever truly wants to get to know the work of Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) must go to Brno. In this Moravian city, where the composer lived and worked for most of his life and premiered his most important operas, Cimarosa Cultuurreizen organizes from 12 to 18 November 2026 a seven-day music tour around the biennial Festival Janáček Brno. Under the musical guidance of Pieter Bergé and the overall tour direction of Hilde Bergé, a program is ready that combines three operas, a concert and an extensive cultural framework.
A city with a rich past
Brno is the largest city in the Czech Republic after Prague and has been the capital of Moravia since 1641. It is not only the city of Janáček, but also of writer Milan Kundera, architect Adolf Loos and Johann Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics. Perched on two hills are the medieval Spilberg Castle and the Gothic Petrov Cathedral, while art nouveau façades enrich the city center. In one of the outlying districts stands the Villa Tugendhat, a masterpiece of modernist architecture that was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2010.
The trip departs on Thursday 12 November from Zaventem with a direct flight to Prague, after which a tour bus heads towards Brno. Along the way there is a stop in Kutná Hora, the former silver city which, due to its historical significance and the late Gothic St. Barbara's Cathedral, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. In the evening, check-in takes place at the Grandhotel Brno, which serves as a base for the entire week.
Music at the center
The beating heart of this trip is the music program of Festival Janáček Brno 2026. Every morning, Pieter Bergé provides an expert introduction in which he prepares the audience for the performance or concert of that day — a formula that deepens listening and places the works in their biographical and historical context.
The first musical highlight is Friday 13 November, entirely dedicated to the festival composer. In the evening, the opera Katja Kabanova (1921) is performed at the Janáček Theater, a work that had its premiere in Brno at the time. Janáček based this opera on the play 'The Storm' by Aleksandr Ostrovski and composed one of his most moving female portraits with it: the story of a sensitive woman who perishes under the suffocating morality of her surroundings. The characteristic melody rooted in Czech speech rhythm that makes Janáček so recognizable comes fully into its own here.
On Saturday 14 November, the music program briefly leaves the opera house for sacred music. In the Basilica of the Assumption of Mary in Old Brno — the place where Janáček himself sang as a choirboy and later performed as a choir conductor — the renowned Czech ensemble Collegium 1704 brings a varied program of religious music. It includes the Missa brevis by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594), the Graduale in Dominica Resurrectionis by Pavel Křížkovský (1820–1885) — not coincidentally Janáček's own teacher — Janáček's Exaudi Deus (JW II/4) and the Magnificat (BWV 243) by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). A program that makes the roots of Janáček's church music education audible, performed at the place where that education began.
Sunday 15 November brings another opera performance at the Janáček Theater: The Makropulos Case (1926), Janáček's penultimate opera, under the musical direction of Robert Kružík and in a production by David Radok. This late masterpiece, based on the play by Karel Čapek, revolves around the three-hundred-year-old Emilia Marty and poses great questions about mortality, love and the meaning of an endless life. The mature, concentrated style of the aging Janáček makes it one of his most fascinating scores.
The musical climax follows on Tuesday 17 November with the closing ceremony of this festival edition. In it, Janáček's two last major works — the opera From the House of the Dead (1928), based on Dostojevski's novel about life in a Siberian prison camp, and the Glagolitic Mass (1926), his monumental setting of an Old Slavic liturgical text — are brought together in one scenic creation. The fact that these two late peaks are united in one performance makes the festival's conclusion an exceptional event: it is Janáček at his most existential and visionary.
In the footsteps of the composer
Between performances, the journey literally takes participants to the places that shaped Janáček's life. On Friday, a city guide leads the group 'in the footsteps of Janáček' through Brno. The walk takes in, among other places, the Augustinian monastery, the organ school founded by Janáček that later developed into the municipal conservatory, and the garden house where the composer lived between 1910 and 1928. His original study with the grand piano on which he composed is still preserved there.
On Sunday, the Augustinian monastery of St.-Thomas is visited, where young Janáček sang as a choirboy and received music lessons; participants will be shown the basilica and the impressive monastery library. This makes the music heard in the evening tangible during the day in the buildings and streets where it was created.
Culture and architecture as a unifying thread
In addition to Janáček, the journey offers a rich cultural programme. On Saturday, a visit to Lednice Castle is scheduled, the neo-Gothic pleasure palace of the Liechtenstein family that, together with Valtice, forms a UNESCO-protected parkland. On Monday 16 November, a day trip to Olomouc follows, the historic Moravian city with its stately squares, baroque fountains and the St.-Wenceslaus Cathedral. The central Horní náměstí houses the monumental Holy Trinity Column — also a World Heritage site — and a striking astronomical clock. This is followed by an exclusive visit to the Villa Primavesi, a refined town villa from the early twentieth century.
Brno itself is extensively covered during the city walk on Sunday, past the St.-Peter and St.-Paul Cathedral, the lively Zelný trh with the Parnassus fountain and the Reduta Theater — the oldest theater in Central Europe, where the young Mozart performed with his sister Nannerl in 1767. Participants will also learn why the cathedral bells always ring an hour early in the afternoon.
On Tuesday, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's modernist Villa Tugendhat is on the programme (subject to availability), and on the final day, Wednesday 18 November, a visit to the impressive underground water reservoirs on Žlutý kopec. These cathedral-like brick halls, built between 1874 and 1917, testify to the technical ambition of late-nineteenth-century Brno and today serve as a unique cultural venue. In the afternoon, the tour bus takes the group to Vienna for the return flight to Brussels.
Practical Information
This seven-day journey combines an intensive immersion in the oeuvre of Janáček with a rich historical and architectural programme. Those wishing to experience the work of this unique twentieth-century voice in the place where it was created will find an excellent opportunity in this journey. Don't delay in signing up!