Teacher's Guide Cambridge Pre-U MUSIC Available for teaching ...

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Cambridge Pre-U Teacher Guide
that was too Wagnerian. The music is of a high quality, however, and since Smetana’s death it has
been better appreciated. Libuše (1872) was described as a ‘ceremonial opera’ and was originally
composed to mark the coronation of Emperor Franz Josef I as King of Bohemia, but the event did
not take place. The first performance of the opera was then delayed so that it could be used for the
opening of the National Theatre, which did not happen until 1881. The story is based on the legend
that Libuše founded the city of Prague and, through her marriage to a peasant, Pemsyl, originated
the first Czech royal dynasty. The final scene depicts Libuše’s vision of a glorious future for the Czech
nation in a series of tableaux. Before Libuše was performed, Smetana had completed three further
operas and started work on a fourth. The Two Widows (1874, revised 1877 and 1882), was a comic
piece based on a French play. Like The Bartered Bride, the original version had spoken dialogue
which was later replaced by recitative. Viola, based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, was begun in
1874 but was still incomplete when Smetana died. The existing fragments were given in a concert
performance in 1900. The Kiss (1876), a ‘folk opera’ was hailed for its Czech qualities and incorporates
one genuine folk song. The Secret (1878) was another comic opera, a genre in which Smetana
excelled. His last opera, The Devil’s Wall (1882) was written when ill health was becoming a serious
problem and was less able to respond to the comic elements in the libretto.
Antonín Dvoák (1841–1904) composed ten operas between 1870 and 1903, but his attitude to them
was somewhat ambivalent. Five of them originate from the 1870s: Alfred (1870) was unknown until
after Dvoák’s death; King and Charcoal Burner (1871; second version 1874, revised 1887), a comic
opera; The Stubborn Lovers (1874), another comic opera; Vanda (1875, revised 1879 and 1883), a
grand opera in which the heroine attempts to win a battle against German invaders by offering
her life to the gods; and The Cunning Peasant (1877), which was the first of Dvoák’s operas to be
performed outside Bohemia. These were followed by Dimitrij (1882, revised 1895), a grand opera that
owes a great deal to Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. The story is a sequel to that of Mussorgsky’s Boris
Godunov, although Dvoák did not know the earlier work. The Jacobin (1888, revised 1897) deals
with the importance of music in the Czech consciousness against a background of intrigue at the court
of a local Count. Dvoák’s last three operas reveal the influence of Wagner and deal with legendary
subjects. In The Devil and Kate (1899) the shrewish anti-heroine dances with the devil, who takes her
to hell but finds he cannot deal with her ways. The score contains a lot of purely instrumental music,
including a descent to hell that derives from the descent to Nibelheim in Das Rheingold. Dvoák’s
most popular opera, both in his native land and abroad, is Rusalka (1900), based on the legend of
the nymph Undine. The fantasy elements in the story clearly made a strong appeal and Dvoák
responded with some of his most expressive music. He composed one further opera, Armida (1903),
which was altogether less successful.
Zdenk Fibich (1850–1900) is a less well known figure than either Dvoák or Janáek, who was just
four years younger, but he was a prominent composer during his lifetime and wrote a large amount
of orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs, melodramas and seven operas. Fibich studied in
Leipzig and Mannheim and cultivated a more obviously international musical language than his
contemporaries, which partly accounts for his relative neglect in his native country. His earliest
operatic sketches are either lost or destroyed, as is his first opera to be performed, Kapellmeister in
Venedig (1866). His first surviving operas, Bukovin (1871) and Blaník (1877) were based on historical
and nationalist subjects and their style is close to Smetana’s. For the next three Fibich turned to
foreign literature: the story of The Bride of Messina (1883) came from a tragedy by Schiller and the
music makes use of a complex series of Wagnerian leitmotifs; The Tempest (1894) was based on
Shakespeare and was the first opera reflecting Fibich’s affair with his pupil Anežka Schulzová; the
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