Katya Kabanova

Description of Janacek's Katya Kabanova from the Metropolitan Opera's website:

This work, which has become equally fascinating to musical commentators and operagoers alike, was a product of Janáček’s remarkable and unparalleled late creative period. The composer found inspiration for the opera in Alexander Ostrovsky’s play The Storm, a realist drama that unfolds out against a backdrop of 19th-century Russian village life, itself a microcosm of vast social developments. In adapting the story for the operatic stage, Janáček crafted a sublime orchestral score that deftly combines many of the strains current in the best operas of the early 20th century.