It would be an understatement to say that 2024 is a banner year for music in the Czech Republic. Not only is it the designated National Year of Czech Music, but it is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana, largely considered to be the father of the Czech national school of classical music. A significant contribution to the festivities will come in the form of two complete cycles of Smetana’s eight operas ambitiously presented at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in the north-eastern Czech city of Ostrava.
One of 19th-century opera’s well-worn tropes dictates a composer’s career arc usually evolves from relatively unsophisticated and often unpopular early works through to the great masterworks of artistic maturity. Jiří Nekvasil, Intendant of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre, disagrees: Smetana’s operatic output just doesn’t fit into this trajectory. By the time he wrote his first opera, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (1863), the composer was already 37, with “an extensive body of piano work, a large symphony, two symphonic poems, and a masterful chamber composition, the Piano Trio in G minor” already behind him.
Additionally, Nekvasil notes “each of his operas is completely different!” further flouting conventional notions of artistic progression. It’s as if Smetana was intent on exploring all of the “expressive, dramaturgical, and aesthetic possibilities and paths offered for modern Czech opera... he metaphorically ‘opened the doors’” for a yet-to-be-invented Czech operatic tradition.
Although it treats a more distant subject from Czech history, Brandenburgers premiered during the Austrian occupation of Bohemia, and so its theme of heroic Czechs fighting oppressive rule resonated with its original audience. Likewise, its significance wouldn’t be lost on subsequent generations of Czechs. During the World War 2 German occupation, Brandenburgers could not be performed and it took on even more significance during the 21 years of Soviet military occupation post-1968. As Nekvasil notes, “while the opera was allowed to be performed, concerns about undesirable reactions were always present, particularly with the first lines of the opera, ‘Já ale pravím, nelze déle zde trpěti cizácké sbory!’ (I say, we can no longer endure the presence of foreign troops!).
When set designer Petr Matásek conceived the company’s production in 2016, the goal was to present a “grand historical canvas viewed through the eyes of the early 21st century.” Although his design makes reference to traditional 19th-century painted scenery, the characteristic hilly Czech landscape has been interpreted in the form of the silhouettes of lying female nudes. “The landscape, a beautiful woman captivating with her beauty, offers the safety of home and friendly rest in her embrace,” says Nekvasil.
The Bartered Bride (1866) remains Smetana’s most popular opera to this day. A Singspiel in its original form, the composer deliberately set out to create a lighter, comic piece in reaction to the accusations of Wagnerism that had been brought against The Brandenburgers with its grand choruses and ensembles. Smetana rejected his critics’ notion that the path to a Czech style was through folk song, preferring instead to inject national character into The Bartered Bride via dances like the polka, furiant, and skočná. The opera has special significance in Ostrava since it inaugurated the activities of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre on 12th August 1919.
The company’s 2022 staging was designed by Daniel Dvořák with whom Nekvasil has collaborated for over 35 years on more than 70 productions. The action opens before dawn as young people gather to decorate the village before a fair. The town square becomes the stage where the opera’s events unfold. Costumes designed by Sylva Zimula Hanáková use “elements inspired by folk costumes, but they are distinctly theatrically stylised,” says Nekvasil. “It’s not a specific region; it’s a Czech village created by imagination for the theatrical stage.”
Dalibor (1867) reminds us what an incredibly ambitious project Smetana had undertaken to establish a Czech national operatic tradition, and how he was excoriated for simultaneously wanting to embed it in a wider European context. A through-composed musical drama, Dalibor is where Smetana perhaps deals most closely with the work of Richard Wagner, especially Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde. This once again sparked fears that Czech opera was in danger of being taken over by foreign entities, and that it should remain independent from international models.
In Ostrava, Dalibor will be presented in the company’s recently-premiered 2023 production by veteran Czech director Martin Otava, current head of the Opera Studio at Prague’s Academy of Music. Stage design is once again in the hands of Daniel Dvořák who presents a combination of historic and futuristic elements including traditional visuals like the two-tailed lion, the symbol of Czech Statehood, alongside more modern lightsaber effects.
Like The Bartered Bride before it, Smetana’s The Two Widows (1874) underwent several revisions, starting as a “numbers” opera with spoken dialogue before its transformation into the final version that will play in Ostrava with its through-composed recitatives, additional choral scenes and grand choral finale to end Act 1. Nekvasil characterises The Two Widows as a “conversational salon opera” that presents the “dream of a modern Czech elite.” Its characters “grapple with questions of honesty in their feelings and moral responsibility to past commitments.”
Musically, its refined, through-composed ensembles advance the plot in much the same way as in Mozart’s famous comedies. Nekvasil notes that Richard Strauss saw The Two Widows several times in Prague and in a way, his own comedy of middle-class manners, Der Rosenkavalier, represents a Viennese version of Smetana’s comedic traversal of Czech country house life. The production is directed and designed by the Slovenian-born, Czech trained artist Rocc, whose recent international work has taken him to the UK, Israel, Norway and the US.
Libuše (1872) holds a very special place in Czech musical history. Its June 1881 premiere marked the opening of Prague’s National Theatre, a hugely significant moment in the ongoing efforts to establish a national opera tradition. A devastating fire only two months later required repairs that led to a grand reopening in 1883 which was also inaugurated with Libuše. Smetana called it a “pageant” or “festival opera”, and to this day it is performed mainly on special holidays such as 1st January, the Restoration Day of the Independent Czech State. It has been 36 years since the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre last presented Libuše, so there is great anticipation for the cycle’s two concert performances, co-produced with the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava and Prague Philharmonic Choir conducted by Robert Jindra, Music Director for opera at Prague’s National Theatre.
Libuše’s score is laden with national significance. Its “opening fanfares also serve as the fanfares for the President of the Czech Republic and, in the past, for the President of Czechoslovakia. So, everyone is familiar with them,” notes Nekvasil. The opera concludes with the title character’s prophecy of a future Czech nation that “will not perish; it will not perish, it will bravely overcome the horrors of hell.” At a particularly significant 1939 performance in Nazi-occupied Prague, Libuše’s words inspired long tumultuous applause and spontaneous singing of the national anthem, a bold manifestation of national pride and bravery.
Popular with audiences since its 1876 premiere, The Kiss is sometimes referred to as “the second Bartered Bride” which Nekvasil (who directs this production) calls “Nonsense! Beneath the apparent simplicity of the story lies immense emotional richness and deep psychology.” A piece like The Kiss which has enjoyed such a long, continuous performing tradition can sometimes accrue a considerable amount of “schtick”. Nekvasil has embraced this challenge as an opportunity to “look at this brilliant opera with a new generation of soloists, mostly tackling these roles for the first time, with fresh eyes, without the clichés of the past.”
The Secret (1878) was one of three operas that Smetana wrote with librettist Eliška Krásnohorská, also known for her work in the realm of women’s rights. It takes place in the small town of Bĕlá in the Bezdĕz mountains, near Smetana's country home. As with his other “comedies” there is a deeper underlying message, in this case, how “to overcome one’s own ego and not lose the last chance to find personal happiness” says Nekvasil. He contends that The Secret “is undoubtedly Smetana’s most formally perfect opera”, as evidenced in the overture where “one of the central motifs appears as a five-voice fugue”.
Smetana’s last opera, The Devil’s Wall (1882), is also his most advanced with harmonic elements that point towards the 20th century. The opera’s title has been interpreted as a metaphor for the “deadly wall” the composer built around himself due to the complete deafness, hallucinations and madness he suffered from 1874 onwards. When considering the nearly 20 years between his first and last operas, Nekvasil reiterates that even though his musical language evolved, Smetana’s inspiration stemmed “from the genre and dramatic needs of the specific opera”. Audiences visiting Ostrava in March and May will have the enviable opportunity to assess Smetana’s foundational contribution to the national Czech music project, and his place in the wider operatic repertoire.
See all listings for the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre’s Smetana Cycle.
This article was sponsored by the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre.
