Smetana: The Bartered Bride

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Kecal, who fears for his share of the dowry, tries to persuade Jeník to abandon Mařenka. Jeník agrees against an indemnity of 300 guldens and under the condition that Mařenka may only marry the son of the peasant Mícha. Kecal, who is not aware that Mícha has got another son, accepts. When Mařenka is informed of the deal, Jeník no longer exists for her. At last he tells her about his identity and the game he played with Kecal, but she only believes him when Mícha, too, recognizes Jeník to be his son and embraces him. As Kecel, David Ireland’s presence is as commanding as his bass-baritone, while John Findon, with his splendid tenor, is genuinely funny as Vašek, though he always ensures that the humour remains in keeping with the character. Whether he is nervous because a woman has merely passed him to go to the ‘ladies’, desperately trying to stomach even just a few gulps of beer or simply sprinting to the (wrong) toilet, it is impossible not to warm to him. With strong support from Yvonne Howard as Ludmila, William Dazeley as Krušina, Isabelle Peters as Esmeralda, Frazer Scott as the Strongman, John Savournin as Mícha and Louise Winter as Háta, this is not so much an evening in which there is nothing not to like, as one in which there is everything to enthuse about. Smetana was naturally gifted as a composer, and gave his first public performance at the age of 6. After conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works. Overall, this is a solid production, dramatically and musically in need of some further tension, but nonetheless, an entertaining evening that admirably translates rural Bohemia to rural England. The Bartered Bride (Czech: Prodaná nevěsta, The Sold Bride) is a comic opera in three acts by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, to a libretto by Karel Sabina. The work is generally regarded as a major contribution towards the development of Czech music. It was composed during the period 1863 to 1866, and first performed at the Provisional Theatre, Prague, on 30 May 1866 in a two-act format with spoken dialogue. Set in a country village and with realistic characters, it tells the story of how, after a late surprise revelation, true love prevails over the combined efforts of ambitious parents and a scheming marriage broker.

The dance sequences are no less striking, especially the ‘Furiant’ of Act 2 where the chorus variously jive and do the Twist, and a young mother-to-be gives the glad-eye to the embarrassed vicar. It’s all meticulously crafted and leaves you wanting more. If only conductor Jac van Steen could have found his dancing shoes and peppered those Bohemian rhythms with a little more spice, the dance episodes would have had the audience tapping their feet. Many other nations can also boast of "favorite sons" whose music has achieved widespread fame — but few have been as musically blessed as the Czech Republic. Leos Janacek wrote a body of internationally acclaimed operas whose music seems inseparable from the rhythms and inflections of the Czech language itself. Antonin Dvorak wrote some of the world's most popular symphonies, yet even the one called the "New World" is unmistakably bound to Czech musical traditions. All this sends Marenka on a roller-coaster emotional journey, and Pumeza Matshikiza plays her with an endearing attitude while singing with gorgeously rich tone, even if her voice is not entirely under control. Oliver Johnston brings an idiomatically plangent tenor to the cunning Jenik. The stammering Vasek can be problematic today, with the humour drawn from his speech impediment, but here he is sympathetically portrayed as simply the product of too much mollycoddling by the excellent tenor John Findon. By October 1862, well before the arrival of any libretto or plot sketch, Smetana had noted down 16bars which later became the theme of The Bartered Bride's opening chorus. In May 1863 he sketched eight bars which he eventually used in the love duet "Faithful love can't be marred", and later that summer, while still awaiting Sabina's revised libretto, he wrote the theme of the comic number "We'll make a pretty little thing". [4] He also produced a piano version of the entire overture, which was performed in a public concert on 18 November. In this, he departed from his normal practice of leaving the overture until last. [8] The men of the village join in a rousing drinking song ("To beer!"), while Jeník and Kecal argue the merits, respectively, of love and money over beer. The women enter, and the whole group joins in dancing a furiant. Away from the jollity the nervous Vašek muses over his forthcoming marriage in a stuttering song ("My-my-my mother said to me"). Mařenka appears, and guesses immediately who he is, but does not reveal her own identity. Pretending to be someone else, she paints a picture of "Mařenka" as a treacherous deceiver. Vašek is easily fooled, and when Mařenka, in her false guise, pretends to woo him ("I know of a maiden fair"), he falls for her charms and swears to give Mařenka up.Vašek expresses his confusions in a short, sad song ("I can't get it out of my head"), but is interrupted by the arrival of a travelling circus. The Ringmaster introduces the star attractions: Esmeralda, the Spanish dancer, a "real Indian" sword swallower, and a dancing bear. A rapid folk-dance, the skočná, follows. Vašek is entranced by Esmeralda, but his timid advances are interrupted when the "Indian" rushes in, announcing that the "bear" has collapsed in a drunken stupor. A replacement is required. Vašek is soon persuaded to take the job, egged on by Esmeralda's flattering words ("We'll make a pretty thing out of you"). Bass-baritone David Ireland was splendid as the oleaginous marriage broker Kecal, puffed up with his own sense of cleverness. His voice was bursting with the marriage broker’s self-confidence with his physicality adding depth to his characterisation. The Bartered Bride 20 June 2008". Národní divlado (National Theatre, Prague). June 2008. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011 . Retrieved 21 June 2009. It’s always a pleasure to zip along the M40 for 45 minutes from West London to the Getty family’s stunning Wormsley Estate in the Chiltern Hills. The home of Garsington Opera, the summer opera festival was founded in 1989 by Leonard and Rosalind Ingrams at Garsington Manor, near Oxford, moving to the Wormsley Estate in 2011 after Leonard’s death. I’m reviewing Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s three-act comic opera The Bartered Bride, the final opera of four in Garsington’s 2023 season, with director Rosie Purdie staging a revival of the 2019 production by Paul Curran, an early 1960s English village hall Bartered Bride that transplanted this rural Bohemian idyll to the more familiar world of the Woman’s Institute. Synopsis [ edit ] Act 1 [ edit ] Open-air performance at the Zoppot Waldoper, near Danzig, July 1912

Press comment was less critical; nevertheless, after one more performance the opera was withdrawn. Shortly afterwards the Provisional Theatre temporarily closed its doors, as the threat of war drew closer to Prague. [17] Restructure [ edit ] In February 1869 Smetana had the text translated into French, and sent the libretto and score to the Paris Opera with a business proposal for dividing the profits. The management of the Paris Opera did not respond. [21] The opera was first performed outside its native land on 11 January 1871, when Eduard Nápravník, conductor of the Russian Imperial Opera, gave a performance at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. The work attracted mediocre notices from the critics, one of whom compared the work unfavourably to the Offenbach genre. Smetana was hurt by this remark, which he felt downgraded his opera to operetta status, [22] and was convinced that press hostility had been generated by a former adversary, the Russian composer Mily Balakirev. The pair had clashed some years earlier, over the Provisional Theatre's stagings of Glinka's A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Lyudmila. Smetana believed that Balakirev had used the Russian premiere of The Bartered Bride as a means of exacting revenge. [23] Still, both Dvorak and Janacek owe a clear debt to Bedrich Smetana, whose efforts may have done more than any other to establish Czech music both at home and abroad.Director Rosie Purdie has retained the bustling level of stage business from the original production. There is a Reverend Richard Coles lookalike vicar conducting the overture with the sound emanating from a retro record player, a district nurse running a bucolic dance class and women in period costume fussing over cake icing. There is a glorious maypole dance and the dynamism of the circus troupe corralled by tenor Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as a Leigh Bowery-esque Ringmaster brought energy and momentum to the production.

Anon. (n.d.). "Moving Pictures: The European Films of Max Ophüls". University of Wisconsin. Archived from the original on 1 October 2009 . Retrieved 6 July 2009. With the exception of Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, and it is hard to picture anyone portraying the Ringmaster in this production so well, all of the principals are different to 2019, but undoubtedly superb. As Mařenka, Pumeza Matshikiza reveals a full yet nuanced soprano that possesses a great flexibility so that all of the required sounds are shaped extremely well. Oliver Johnston, with his strong and vibrant tenor, captures Jeník’s determination to succeed and wry humour in equal measure, while the chemistry between the pair manifests itself from very early on as they even reveal it through the simple act of making sandwiches together. The Bartered Bride is ultimately a comedy, and this production makes the scene in which Mařenka refuses to listen to Jeník’s explanation particularly amusing, but what comes across most clearly is the extent of her grief because she genuinely believes that the man who loves her has sold out. The Czech music specialist John Tyrrell has observed that, despite the casual way in which The Bartered Bride's libretto was put together, it has an intrinsic "Czechness", being one of the few in Czech written in trochees (a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one), matching the natural first-syllable emphasis in Czech. [10] Composition [ edit ] Holden, Amanda; Kenyon, Nicholas; Walsh, Stephen, eds. (1993). The Viking Opera Guide. London: Viking. p. 989. ISBN 0-670-81292-7.

Classical and Opera

Prodaná Nevěsta; 팔려간 신부; Проданная невеста; La Fiancée vendue; La novia vendida; Satılmış Nişanlı; La núvia venuda; Myyty morsian; La sposa venduta; Prodaná nevěsta; Die verkaufte Braut; 売られた花嫁; Prodana nevesta; Продадена невеста; Brudköpet; Den solgte brud; Cô dâu bị bán đi; Prodana nevjesta; Վաճառված հարսնացուն; Sprzedana narzeczona; La Promesa venduda; הכלה המכורה; Az eladott menyasszony; Продана наречена; Η ανταλλαγμένη νύφη The circus perfomer Esmerelda (Amanda Squitieri) entertains villagers in the Paris Opera production of The Bartered Bride. Big celebrations are promised in the Czech Republic for next year’s bicentenary of Bedrich Smetana, the “father of Czech opera” and composer of other orchestral and chamber music masterpieces. All eight of his operas will be staged as a cycle in Ostrava, but elsewhere we’ll have to make do with the familiar titles: no hardship when it comes The Bartered Bride, a score of sublime musical fecundity. The opera continued to be composed in a piecemeal fashion, as Sabina's libretto gradually took shape. Progress was slow, and was interrupted by other work. Smetana had become Chorus Master of the Hlahol Choral Society in 1862, and spent much time rehearsing and performing with the Society. [11] He was deeply involved in the 1864 Shakespeare Festival in Prague, conducting Berlioz's Romeo et Juliette and composing a festival march. [12] That same year he became music correspondent of the Czech-language newspaper Národní listy. Smetana's diary for December 1864 records that he was continuing to work on The Bartered Bride; the piano score was completed by October 1865. It was then put aside so that the composer could concentrate on his third opera Dalibor. [13] Smetana evidently did not begin the orchestral scoring of The Bartered Bride until, following the successful performance of The Brandenburgers in January 1866, the management of the Provisional Theatre decided to stage the new opera during the following summer. The scoring was completed rapidly, between 20 February and 16 March. [13] Roles [ edit ] Roles, voice types, premiere cast Role So far, changes to the original had been of a minor nature, but when the opera reappeared in June 1869 it had been entirely restructured. Although the musical numbers were still linked by dialogue, the first act had been divided in two, to create a three-act opera. [18] Various numbers, including the drinking song and the new polka, were repositioned, and the polka was now followed by a furiant. A "March of the Comedians" was added, to introduce the strolling players in what was now act 3. A short duet for Esmeralda and the Principal Comedian was dropped. [18] [19] In September 1870 The Bartered Bride reached its final form, when all the dialogue was replaced by recitative. [18] Smetana's own opinion of the finished work, given much later, was largely dismissive: he described it as "a toy ... composing it was mere child's play". It was written, he said "to spite those who accused me of being Wagnerian and incapable of doing anything in a lighter vein." [20] Later performances [ edit ] The Metropolitan Opera House, New York, around the time of The Bartered Bride's New York premiere under Gustav Mahler in 1909

Meanwhile, Kecal is attempting to buy Jeník off, and after some verbal fencing makes a straight cash offer: a hundred florins if Jeník will renounce Mařenka. Not enough, is the reply. When Kecal increases the offer to 300 florins, Jeník pretends to accept, but imposes a condition – no one but Mícha's son will be allowed to wed Mařenka. Kecal agrees, and rushes off to prepare the contract. Alone, Jeník ponders the deal he has apparently made to barter his beloved ("When you discover whom you've bought"), wondering how anyone could believe that he would really do this, and finally expressing his love for Mařenka.Paul Curran’s 2019 The Bartered Bride, set in late 1950s Britain, makes a welcome return to the Wormsley Estate in Rosie Purdie’s likeable revival. With a new cast, this folksy happy-ever-after rom-com continues to enchant and amuse. Aside from the opera’s attractive music, the universal appeal of the work (premiered in 1866 and first heard in Britain in 1895) depends on local character and small incident rather than on any broadly dramatic element which, with the best will in the world, is fairly minimal – boy loves girl whose parents have arranged for her to marry another, yet all comes right in the end. This production is enlivened more by the colourful and diverting characterisations from within the chorus of villagers (almost a template for Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring) than the principal singers who, good as they are, bring uneven performances with few moments that either startle the ear or moisten the eye. In strongly-focused voice, David Ireland presents Kecal as a consummate salesman and a bit of a wide boy. There’s a lively quartet of parents (William Dazeley, Yvonne Howard, John Savournin and Louise Winter) and a tireless circus troupe. Only in Smetana can you go to an opera and enjoy the circus. David Ireland is excellent as the marriage-broker Kecal, self-important, venal, everything nasty within a somehow likeable frame; his wonderful entry song, done here with superb panache, always reminds me of Eisenstein’s entry in Die Fledermaus, a gust of materialism blowing away the sentimental smoke. John Findon is a big, shambling Vašek, but a touchingly delicate singer, very moving in his Act 2 number with Mařenka, a love duet of thoroughgoing sadism. And the parents (William Dazely, Yvonne Howard, John Savournin and Louise Winter) do as well as Smetana lets them while casting them as money-grubbing hypocrites.