Leoš Janáček
(born Hukvaldy, Moravia 3 July 1854; died Moravska, Ostrava 12 August 1928)

Janacek was the most significant Czech composer in the generation that followed Smetana and Dvorak.

Like England’s Elgar, he was a late developer whose first opera of distinction was not given until he was 50 and his greatest operas were not written until after he had reached 65.

Largely thanks to the advocacy of Sadler’s Wells/ENO and the conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, his reputation was firmly established and began to grow in the 1950s.

Today, Janacek is regarded as one of the most substantial, original and immediately appealing opera composers of the twentieth century, whose stage works stand alongside those of Richard Strauss, Puccini and Britten in the core repertory.