The Inspiration series offers a platform for debut performances by major international artists, and for premieres of new projects initiated by the Festival. For the third year in a row, this series is being co-organized by the National Theatre in Prague. That is also why one of its inspiring elements is the world of opera and theatre.

The hallmark of autumn is a multitude of colours, fragrances, and tastes. The season in which growth converges with ripening is the best of times for celebration. The Strings of Autumn Festival is a celebration of the art of music alive in a plethora of charming forms and manifestations. I am pleased to be able, as one of this Festival´s partners, to welcome to the Czech Republic´s premier stage, which has been the home of the art of music and drama, and as such has earned high recognition on the part of the general public, a project which is unorthodox and which attests, perhaps for that particular reason, to the most exciting and most worthwhile developments on the contemporary music scene. The opening of the Festival in the Estates Theatre, by a concert production entitled The Voice of Handel, featuring the British tenor Ian Bostridge and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, is therefore more than appropriate. A gala opening which links up, as it does in this case, the wealth of historical heritage with the art of the present time, opens up before the Festival the space within which it will carry on presenting interpreters of widely varied forms of music co-existing in a world that is one and common to us all. Let me wish all of you who have come to sit back and listen to the first tones of the Strings of Autumn, to enjoy the best of what music has to offer.

Jiří Heřeman
Artistic Director, opera company of the National Theatre in Prague