The Bartered Bride
Related Artists/Companies
Bedrich SmetanaPast Performances
National Symphony Orchestra: James Conlon, conductor/Sarah Chang, violin - May 13 - 15, 2004
About the Composition
The second of Smetana's eight completed operas, Prodana nevesta , known in English as The Bartered Bride , was composed between 1863 and 1866 and first produced at the Provisional Theater in Prague on May 30 of the latter year. Smetana then revised the work no fewer than three times; the fourth and final version was introduced on the same stage on September 25, 1870. The National Symphony Orchestra performed these three dances for the first time in Young People's Concerts conducted by Howard Mitchell on November 1, 2 and 3, 1955, and presented them most recently at Wolf Trap on July 1, 1998, conducted by Arnold Roth. The orchestra recorded the Dance of the Comedians under Mr. Mitchell for RCA Victor.
The orchestra for specified in the familiar concert arrangements by Hugo Riesenfeld comprises a piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, bass drum, and strings. Duration, 11 minutes.
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Smetana's first large-scale attempt at creating a Czech national music was his first opera, Branibori v Cechach (“The Brandenburgers in Bohemia”) , composed in 1862-63 to a libretto by Karel Sabina similar in outline to the Pushkin crama adapted by Mussorgsky a few years later for his Boris Godunov. It was while he was awaiting the first production of The Brandenburgers , which did not come about till January 1866, that he undertook the composition of a contrasting comic work, again with Sabina as his librettist, and this was to surpass all his other works for the stage, both in sheer substance and as a musical picture of Czech life. The Bartered Bride quickly became recognized as the Czech national opera and so remains, internationally as well as at home, while Smetana's more serious stage works seldom travel beyond his own country's borders. (The epic Libuše, In fact, has been reserved for domestic ceremonial occasions, as Smetana himself directed.)
The English title, The Bartered Bride , is really not an accurate one, since the heroine of the drama is not a bride but a fiancée. The translation, it seems, was not made from the original Czech title, but from the German one, Die verkaufte Braut— the translator apparently unaware that Braut means “an engaged woman,” or “a fiancée,” except on the actual wedding day, when the meaning is elevated to “bride.” But no matter: the sense of the actual title would be difficult, if not impossible, to render in English, while The Bartered Bride has a fine ring to it.
The plot of this adorable work need not concern us in listening to these orchestral excerpts in dance forms, which themselves call for little in the way of commentary and still less in the way of analysis. One of Smetana's earliest compositions was an orchestral polka he composed for the inaugural meeting of the patriotic society Narodní Beseda in 1849, and one of his last was another polka for that organization's 30th anniversary. Polkas appear throughout his piano music and in his chamber music—most notably in the String Quartet in E minor of 1876, which he titled Z mého života (“From My Life”). It was natural enough that the polka would find a prominent place in The Bartered Bride , and Smetana composed an especially brilliant one for the finale of Act I, which takes place in a village inn. In its original setting it calls for a chorus in the final section, wityh the men asking the women to dance with them and then both the men and the women singing of the “basses humming, cymbals crashing, the ground itself dancing” as the polka whirls to its stirring conclusion.
The other two dances are purely orchestral in their respective settings in the opera. The furiant is one of the most vigorous of all Czech dances; Dvorák used this form in his chamber music and symphonies as well as his Slavonic Dances. The brief but striking example in The Bartered Bride is danced by the men on the village green following their chorus at the inn in praise of beer, at the opening of Act II. The rousing Dance of the Comedians, performed by a visiting circus troupe in the first scene of Act III, is a skocná, literally a “jumping dance.” This form, too, was to be used by Dvorák in his concert works.
