Jean Racine: Britannicus

The tragedy, which still moves today with the unfortunate fate of the loving couple Junia and Britannicus, was staged by director Josef Melč with a rare sense of its clear compositional order and sonorous verse in 1991 with Ivan Řezáč as Britannicus and Pavel Soukup as the cruel emperor Nero. As Jean Racine (1639-1699) wrote in both of the oft-quoted prefaces to his tragedy: in Britannicus he wanted to capture above all the nascent monster, the "monstre naissant", the dramatic moment in which Nero becomes Nero. The young emperor has just ascended the throne and is engaged in a struggle with his strong-willed mother Agrippina, which culminates in the murder of Nero's half-brother Britannicus. The audience watches the birth of a tyrant, in whose immediate surroundings there is no one who could successfully resist him or impress him as a moral authority.