Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

The Bartered Bride
Prodaná Nevesta

Czech Composers

In his homeland, Bedrich Smetana is known as far more than the composer of The Bartered Bride . Because of his compositions and his work in the production and encouragement of Czech opera during an intense period of nationalism, he is considered the “father of Czech music.” Certainly he was not the first to write an opera in his native language; rather, he is honored as the beginning of an unbroken tradition of works that stretched from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Although he spoke German—for many years, the official language of the educated in the Habsburg empire— and could barely communicate in Czech, his dedication to the preservation of dramatic music that reflected the heritage of his homeland yields him a special place in its music history. In citing his country's culture in his scores, Smetana chose to highlight the rhythms of national dances; in The Bartered Bride , for instance, one hears the furiant , with its easy shifts from duple to triple meter (the same rhythm, by the way, that Antonín Dvorák employed in some of his instrumental works). Perhaps the most recognizable rhythmic allusion is to the polka, one Smetana used as well in almost every opera that succeeded The Bartered Bride . Although his early works were criticized for weak settings of Czech, a language in which the stress almost always falls on the first syllable of a word, his later operas demonstrate a marked improvement in the construction of musical lines around this metric pattern.

Smetana proved to be an influence on virtually all Czech opera composers who came after him, not the least of these Dvorák. Unlike his predecessor, however, who tended to view the world of Czech opera from the inside, Dvorák was unafraid to allow the works of major composers like Wagner and Verdi to color his own artistic creations. This allegiance, however, caused the composer to be criticized and contrasted to Smetana, who, it was said, was more true to the Czech artistic heritage. Nevertheless, works like Rusalka and Armida are now seen as examples of the late nineteenth-century genius of the Prague stage. Of note, too, is that Dvorák's interest in foreign operas resulted in an interesting amalgam of styles, a merger that added a dimension to his stage works that Smetana's perhaps lacked.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Leoš Janácek contributed to the growing rich heritage of Czech opera. While many of his predecessors had concentrated on Bohemian musical elements, Janácek began an intense study of the music of his native region, Moravia . Working with Dvorák as an artistic mentor, Janácek went on to compose the work that, next to The Bartered Bride , represents Czech opera in the international repertory: Jenufa . Although it took nearly 12 years of revisions, this intense drama was finally produced in Prague , after which it became a huge success and remains so there as well as throughout the world. Another of his operas has seen growing international interest: Príhody Lišky Bystroušky , or it is known in English, The Cunning Little Vixen .

It is naïve to assume that only three composers contributed to the Czech operatic heritage. Other names must be added to the list: František Škroup, Georg Benda, Vilém Blodek, Karel Bendl, and Bohuslav Martinu, to name just a few. As opera scholarship extends beyond the traditional boundaries of the Italian-French-German repertory, the works of these composers are being studied and performed, both in their homeland and abroad.

-Denise Gallo

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