Musically, Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride is marvellous, vivid, dance-infused work. In the second performance of the run, conductor Jac van Steen and the Philharmonia Orchestra were achieving ...

Smetana and the librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who expected the "national opera" to be an idyllic picture of the Czech countryside, with its inhabitants being virtuous and ...

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For over 150 years, The Bartered Bride has occupied the top position among Czech operas. Said to be now part of the Czech DNA, its popularity eclipses that of any other feted Bedřich Smetana opera.

Director Paul Curran transfers Smetana’s comic masterpiece to 1950s England to create an irresistibly energetic production A generation ago, Smetana’s comic masterpiece could still be billed as the ...

And it has an anti-hero in the person of a youth with a stammer, who gets laughed at and ends up as a circus bear. The fact that the proposed sale is a trick to enable a genuine love match is the sort ...

There’s no shortage of movie musicals based on popular plays. Far fewer are based on operas. Max Ophüls’s rarely seen 1932 film “The Bartered Bride,” a seventy-six-minute, giddily inventive adaptation ...

Although in The Bartered Bride Smetana largely avoided the direct quotation of folksong, the music he composed was considered to be Czech in spirit, meaning that he succeeded in his aim of creating a ...

Bedrich Smetana deals with love In his earthy opera "The Bartered Bride." It may not be politically correct — the bride is bought, after all — but everything turns out happily in the end. Here's an ...

Garsington favourite that transfers Smetana’s Czech comedy to a 1960s English setting delights again The hit of Garsington’s 2019 season, Bedřich Smetana’s village comedy returns with revival director ...

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