Parch: Judita

On December 1, 2024, Ivan Repušić, chief conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra, conducted a concert performance of Frano Parać's opera "Judita" at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. This opera in two acts and seven scenes deals with the siege of a city by brutal foreign invaders. The biblical story of Judith, who liberates her home city of Bethulia from the Assyrian occupiers by killing Holofernes, certainly has parallels to Croatian history, particularly to the history of the city of Split. From the middle of the 15th century, the country fought repeatedly against incursions by the Ottoman Empire—and Split in Dalmatia was particularly vulnerable to attacks by the Turks, who advanced right up to its gates. In his epic "Judita," completed in 1501, the poet Marko Marulić (1450–1524) alludes to these events in allegorical form. As one of the earliest poetic works in the Croatian language, it established Marulić's reputation as the father of Croatian literature. On the occasion of the author's 550th birthday in 2000 and to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the founding of Split, composer Frano Parać, who was born in Split in 1948, chose the epic "Judita" as the basis for his first opera. The premiere took place on July 14, 2000, at the Croatian National Theatre in Split. The live recording from December 2024 is now being released on CD—it is the world premiere of the opera—supplemented by "Dance of the Baroness" (Ples Barunice) from Parać's 1985 dramatic ballet "Carmina Krležiana," which is based on texts by the expressionist-modernist writer Miroslav Krleža. First published in a piano version in 1990, the dance is a rewarding and effective piece for pianists—and its orchestral version is equally impressive.