On December 1, 2024, Ivan Repušić, chief conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra, conducted a concert performance of Frano Parać’s opera Judita at Munich’s Prinzregententheater.

This two-act, seven-scene opera is about the siege of a city by brutal foreign invaders. The biblical story of Judith, who liberates her homeland of Bethulia from its Assyrian occupiers by killing Holofernes, certainly has parallels with Croatian history, particularly that of the city of Split. From the mid-15th century onwards, the country repeatedly fought against incursions by the Ottoman Empire – and Split in Dalmatia was particularly vulnerable to the attacks of the Turks, who advanced to its gates. The poet Marko Marulić (1450–1524) alludes to these events in allegorical form in his epic Judita, completed in 1501. One of the earliest poetic works in the Croatian language, it established Marulić’s reputation as the father of Croatian literature. To celebrate the 550th anniversary of the author’s birth in 2000, and in commemoration of the 1,700th anniversary of the foundation of Split, Frano Parać, a composer born in Split in 1948, chose the epic Judita as the basis for his first opera. It premiered on July 14, 2000 at the Croatian National Theatre in Split.

The live recording made in December 2023 is now being released on CD by BR-KLASSIK, supplemented by Dance of the Baroness (Ples Barunice) from Parać’s 1985 dramatic ballet Carmina Krležiana, based on texts by the expressionist-modernist writer Miroslav Krleža. First published in 1990 in a piano version, the dance is a rewarding and effective piece for pianists – and its orchestral version is equally impressive.