SESSIONS

Friday, June 2

18.00 – 19.00

Chair: Aleš Březina

KEYNOTE Bedřich Smetana on Opera in his Correspondence and Diaries

Dr. Olga Mojžíšová, National Museum – Bedřich Smetana Museum / Dr. Milan Pospíšil, Association for Central European Cultural Studies Prague

Smetana’s relationship with opera lasted from his first public appearance as a child, when he performed the overture to La Muette de Portici on the piano, until the end of his life, when in one of his last writings he expressed his desire to succeed as an opera composer. His authentic statements on opera can be found mainly in manuscript sources (diaries, correspondence, records from the time of his conducting activity), but they are also provided by his published reviews of opera performances at the Provisional Theatre in Prague. The structure of Smetana’s testimonies about opera has various levels, which are largely related to his current position and professional activity.

Since his student years he had been continuously interested in opera as a listener and spectator. Later he also traveled to opera performances and recorded his impressions, and was also interested in information about opera life from elsewhere. From his youth he also encountered opera as a pianist and later as a conductor and teacher.

During his tenure as head of the opera of the Provisional Theatre, he kept records of the operas performed, During his tenure at the head of the Czech opera house, he kept records of the operas he conducted, the performances of the singers and the quality of the performances; some of the writings tell us about his repertoire preferences, and some of the correspondence also concerns the opera business. olga_mojzisova@nm.cz milan.pospisil@idu.cz

As a composer, Smetana turned his attention to opera only in the 1860s, when it became the focus of his further work. The written sources contain information about his opera plans, subjects, cooperation with librettists, the process of composing individual operas, their characteristics in relation to contemporary opera, and his assessment of himself as an opera composer. The correspondence and diaries also document negotiations on the performance of Smetana’s operas. They contain his requests for performers, records of performances, their financial returns, responses and reviews, and also document matters surrounding the publication of his operas. Smetana’s comments on his own work are not very frequent or extensive compared to the reflections of some other opera composers of his time. This, on the other hand, makes them of great importance, and in view of their dispersion in various types of written sources, their summary and analysis are very important.

Saturday, June 3

Opera Aesthetics And Compositional Practice

Chair: Axel Körner

9.00 – 9.45 Darstellung der „Grundidee“? Smetanas Opernouvertüren im Licht seiner Symphonischen Dichtungen

Prof. Dr. Arne Stollberg, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Innerhalb der „neudeutschen“ Partei waren Funktion und Gestaltungsweise einer Opernouvertüre durchaus umstritten: Während Richard Wagner für seine frühen Opern bis Lohengrin bekanntlich noch umfangreiche Vorspiele geschrieben und sich auch theoretisch über Prinzipien der Ouvertüre Gedanken gemacht hatte, verfochten er und sein publizistischer Adlatus Theodor Uhlig in den frühen 1850er Jahren die These, dass zum Beispiel die Tannhäuser-Ouvertüre etwas zu unternehmen versuche, was reine Instrumentalmusik nicht leisten könne, nämlich den Inhalt und die Idee der Oper nur mit Tönen ohne Beihilfe von Text und Szene auszudrücken. Dem Wagner der Zürcher Reformschriften musste dies als Irrtum gelten, ging er nun doch von dem Grundsatz aus, dass die seit Beethoven um „Sprachvermögen“ ringende Instrumentalmusik sich erst in Verbindung mit dem Drama verständlich machen könne. Franz Liszt hingegen verteidigte Wagner in diesem Punkt gleichsam gegen sich selbst, indem er der Tannhäuser-Ouvertüre attestierte, sie sei „ein Gedicht über denselben Gegenstand wie ihre Oper, aber ebenso umfassend wie diese“. Nicht zufällig nannte Liszt die Ouvertüre denn auch ein „poëme symphonique“, wodurch er seinem eigenen Konzept dieser arne.stollberg@hu-berlin.de

Gattung erstmals den zugehörigen Namen gab. Der Vortrag wird der Frage nachgehen, wo sich Smetana als Komponist von Opern bzw. Opernouvertüren und Symphonischen Dichtungen in dieser Debatte situieren lässt und wie das Verhältnis zwischen Orchestereinleitungen zu Bühnenwerken und selbständigen Instrumentalstücken mit poetisch-dramatischen Sujets bei ihm kompositorisch zu bestimmen ist.

9.45 – 10.30 „... weder Wagner noch Offenbach.“

Smetanas Libuše und die politische Macht der Bilder

Prof. Dr. Ivana Rentsch, Universität Hamburg

Noch kurz vor seinem Tod 1883 erklärte Bedřich

Smetana Libuše zur wichtigsten seiner acht vollendeten Opern. Sein nachvollziehbares Verdikt erwies sich für die Rezeption der „Festoper“ allerdings als zwiespältig, da es nicht nur zur Verabsolutierung der ästhetischen Qualität führte, sondern als Kehrseite auch zu einer weitgehenden Ausblendung des kulturhistorischen Entstehungszusammenhangs. In dem Beitrag soll die Konzeption von Libuše auf der zeitgeschichtlichen Folie diskutiert und damit zwangsläufig auch die massive Krise des Habsburgerreichs um 1870 berücksichtigt werden. Dabei möchte ich insbesondere den gezielten Einsatz symbolisch überhöhter Tableaus in den Blick nehmen, die in ihrer Beschaffenheit weit über die spezifische Prager Situation hinaus auf eine für das 19. Jahrhundert charakteristische europäische Praxis verweisen. Die Mode „lebender Bilder“, die sich bis in die kaiserliche Familie hinein größter Beliebtheit erfreute, wird ebenso zu berücksichtigen sein wie die symbolische Überfrachtung der nicht zuletzt in Prag aufmerksam verfolgten Krönung ivana.rentsch@uni-hamburg.de

Franz Josephs zum König von Ungarn 1867. Es ist denn auch die politische Macht der Bilder, die Libuše ihren zeittypischen Stempel aufgedrückt hat.

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee break

Smetanas Musik für Tableaux vivants: Vom Puppentheater bis zu Libuše Dr. Thomas Jaermann, London

11.00 – 11.45

Es-Dur! Eine Wellenbewegung erhebt sich aus den tiefen Streichern; Kontrabässe und Celli zuerst; später kommen die Bratschen und die Violinen dazu; auf und ab geht die Linie; keine Melodie nur Klang. – Was sich wie eine Beschreibung von Richard Wagners Rheingold liest, ist in der Tat eine von Bedřich Smetanas kurzem Orchesterstück Rybář. In Smetanas Werkkatalog finden sich drei Kompositionen, die zur Untermalung von Tableaux vivants komponiert wurden. Es sind Kuriositäten, die zusammen mit den beiden Ouvertüren für Puppentheater eine ganz persönliche Seite des Komponisten zeigen, nämlich: Smetana als gesellige Privatperson, die den gesellschaftlichen Umgang liebte. Rybář und die anderen beiden Musiken für Tableaux vivants sind Gelegenheitswerke und wurden für ein Benefizkonzert zugunsten der Fertigstellung des Veitsdoms auf der Prager Burg geschrieben und sie wurden im Mai 1869 bei einer aristokratische Liebhaberaufführung inszeniert. Tableaux vivants hatten sich in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts zu einer populären th.jaermann@gmail.com

Form der bürgerlichen Unterhaltung entwickelt, denn sie waren nicht nur lehrreich, sondern boten durch das partizipative Element auch eine anregende Form der Vergnügung. Sie wurden deshalb gerne im privaten oder halbprivaten Kontext der bürgerlichen Salons inszeniert. Doch auch im Theater und schließlich in der Oper fand das Tableau vivant Verwendung. Ein kurzes, mit Musik untermaltes Innehalten in der Handlung prägte sich dem Publikum besonders ein.

Kurz nachdem Smetana die drei Tableaux vivants komponiert hatte, begann er mit der Komposition der Oper Libuše, und es scheint, als ob ihm die kurzen Orchesterstücke als Vorübung für den dritten Akt der Oper, die Visionen der Libuše, gedient hätten. Dieser Beitrag will diese kurzen und eigentümlichen Orchesterstücke beleuchten, und besonders mit Bezug auf die Tableaux vivants die Bedeutung und Verwendung dieser in der Oper Libuše beschreiben.

11.45 – 12.30 No Regrets? Krásnohorská’s Vlasta as a Libretto (not) for Smetana

Prof. Dr. Brian Locke, Western Illinois University

In January 1871, Eliška Krásnohorská wrote in one of her earliest surviving letters to Smetana: “I regret that I cannot provide you with Vlasta: it has already been completed and given to the composer. […] I would love to see it in your hands, but it is no longer possible. Besides, Vlasta has such a brooding, even dreadful quality, […] you will not regret it.” The Vlasta in question was her 1869 libretto— the first of its kind on the subject of the Maidens’ War, predating Zeyer, Schulzová, Pippich, even Smetana’s tone poem Šárka —and it was then in the hands of her brother-in-law, the composer Hynek Palla. Nevertheless, the opera seems tailor-made for the composer of Libuše, and Smetana asked her repeatedly for it, regretting his lost chance for some time afterwards. Krásnohorská too seems to have regretted the circumstance, for she eventually succeeded in retrieving Vlasta from Palla and revising it, though by the mid-1870s Smetana had turned to comic opera.

The Vlasta manuscript survives complete in the Palla estate papers as two distinct drafts, written one on top of the other in the same document. The original version, a fair copy from 1869, takes a strong stance on women’s rights from the outset; whereas the revision appears in a cramped, older hand, but contains a greater sense of musico-dramatic cohesion. Krásnohorská’s technique of building a scene from an initial confrontation into a polyphonic ensemble resembles her best work in Tajemství, and the increase in references to Libuše’s plot make it clear that, despite the regrets of a missed opportunity, her Vlasta was intended in spirit for Smetana.

B-Locke@wiu.edu

12.30 – 14.00 Lunch break

Reception History

Chair: Martin Nedbal

14.00 – 14.45

From Vienna and Berlin to Chicago and New York: How The Bartered Bride Made its Way across the Atlantic

Prof. Dr. David Brodbeck, University of California, Irvine dbrod@uci.edu

The strikingly successful performances of Bedřich Smetana’s Prodaná nevěsta at Vienna’s International Exhibition of Music and Theater in June 1892 sparked great interest in the composer’s comic masterpiece throughout the German-speaking world and beyond. In the first part of this paper, I examine the efforts of one early champion of the work, a young German regisseur named Adolf Baumann, to mount a German-language production in Berlin under the title Die verkaufte Braut. This production, which ran for several weeks in July 1893, was an artistic and critical success but a box-office failure. As a result, Baumann’s company collapsed and with it also his hope of taking Die verkaufte Braut and two other operas by Smetana on a “triumphal march of Czech music” throughout the United States. The second half of the paper is concerned with subsequent attempts—some successful, some not—to stage the opera on the other side of the Atlantic. Particular attention is paid to the first such performance, given in Czech by the touring Ludvík Theatrical Players in August 1893 in connection with the celebration of Bohemian Day at the Chicago World’s Fair, as well as to the first fully professional American production, given in German under the baton of Gustav Mahler at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House beginning in February 1909. I rely throughout on newspaper reports, personal correspondence, and other primary sources, and, where applicable, I consider the work vis-à-vis contemporaneous nationalities politics in Habsburg Austria, which not only colored social and political life in Central Europe but also surfaced from time to time in German and Czech immigrant communities in the United States.

14.45 – 15.30 Prodaná nevěsta auf den Mailänder

Bühnen: 1905 und 1935

Prof. Dr. Vincenzina C. Ottomano, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia

Obwohl das italienische Publikum die Ouvertüre von Prodaná nevěsta kannte – Arturo Toscanini hatte sie seit 1895 wiederholt in seine Konzertprogramme aufgenommen –, wurde die ganze Oper erst am 9. Oktober 1905 im Teatro Lirico in Mailand aufgeführt. Die Initiative zu dieser Aufführung ging von dem polnischen Impresario Ludwik Heller aus, der eine Herbstsaison organisierte, in der er dem Mailänder Publikum neben Smetanas Oper auch die italienischen Erstaufführungen von Moniuszkos Halka und Massenets Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame mit einer Truppe aus polnischen und italienischen Sängern (Tadeusz Leliwa, Irena Bohuss-Hellerowa, Gaetano Pini-Corsi, Ines Maria Ferraris) präsentierte. Genau dreißig Jahre später, auf dem Höhepunkt des faschistischen Regimes, kam Smetanas Oper dank der Bemühungen des Dirigenten Franco Ghione, der auch die italienische Fassung des Librettos erstellte, auf die Bühne des Teatro alla Scala. Ebenfalls im Frühjahr 1935 wurde Franco Ghione als Gastdirigent an das Národní divadlo in Prag eingeladen, wo er Prodaná nevěsta, Aida und La traviata dirigierte. Anhand von Archivdokumenten und Rezensionen wird dieser Beitrag die „späte“ italienische Rezeption von Smetanas Prodaná nevěsta beleuchten und aufzeigen, wie diese beiden Produktionen

Diskussionen über die Besonderheit der „komischen“ Operngattung und die Ideen rund um den musikalischen

Nationalismus auslösten, die in der italienischen Debatte der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts entscheidend waren. vincenzina.ottomano@unive.it

16.00 – 16.45 Revising Smetana, Restoring Smetana: Václav Juda

Novotný

and the Performance History of Dvě vdovy

Dr. Christopher Campo-Bowen, Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts

Bedřich Smetana is regarded as the foundational composer of the Czech operatic tradition, if not of Czech classical music as a whole. His operas, symphonic poems, and other musical works are frequently regarded as national treasures, as sacrosanct exemplars of Czech culture. Yet his canonic status, and that of his music, was not always as inviolate as present-day narratives would suggest. In this paper, I explore a smaller moment in the long history of how Smetana’s status as the canonic Czech composer came to be established. My case study is his opera Dvě vdovy, which was one of Smetana’s less successful operas and underwent a number of different revisions, both during and after the composer’s lifetime. Those made by translator, composer, and writer Václav Juda Novotný in the 1890s were among the most extreme of all, and they are particularly illuminating in terms of how they reveal the fluctuations of Smetana’s canonic status. I argue that Novotný’s revisions ultimately created a paradox that eventually led to their repudiation: Smetana’s less successful operas, in order to serve as ideal artistic symbols, had to be improved, and Dvě vdovy has never enjoyed the same audience or critical success as Prodaná nevěsta or Hubička. However, if Smetana’s operas could be improved, then he as a composer was not infallible—a position that went against growing the consensus on Smetana as a mythic artist-hero in the Beethovenian mould By examining archival sources, periodicals, and Novotný’s revisions themselves, I provide insight not only into the historiography of Smetana, but also into the shifting artistic and aesthetic debates of fin-de-siècle Prague. ccb20@vt.edu

16.45 – 17.30 The Devils of Litomyšl

Prof. Dr. Michael Brim Beckerman, NYU, New York

There are devils everywhere in Litomyšl. Whether on the façade of Na Sklípku or the painted walls of the Portmoneum you see them, and they are also, of course in the music of Litomyšl’s most renowned citizen. This presentation looks at Smetana’s Devil’s Wall in the context of broad Czech and European traditions of devilry (musical and otherwise) in particular at the dance sequence of Act 3, scene 6 as an example of the ambivalence inspired by devils and demons. While on the one hand, the devil is, of course, a creature of evil, who inspires terror, as represented in such things as nativity scenes (so called Králiky or Grulich figures) literally thousands of different kinds of marionettes and vozembouchs, he is also sometimes a friendly spirit, a comic figure, both a disabler and a patron of the status quo. An analysis of the Devil’s Dance, with reference to devil dances in the music of Dvořák and Martinů reveals a broader ambivalence around the capacity of music to actually create representations of the devil, as well the manner in which “devil music” anticipates modernist trends.

mike.beckerman@gmail.com

Institutional History And Operatic Practices

Chair: Ivana Rentsch

9.00 – 9.45 Transnational Opera for a Cosmopolitan Empire. Operatic Politics in Habsburg Europe, 1815-1862

Prof. Dr. Axel Körner, Universität Leipzig / UCL London

“What a positive occurrence of my life is the Italian opera, which I finally managed to establish [in Vienna] – a true and great victory that I achieved,” proclaimed Metternich in 1822. The main focus of Vienna’s Italian seasons became Rossini, leading to almost 2000 performances during the composer’s life-time and outmatching the number of productions in any Italian city. Investigating imperial politics of opera in Habsburg Europe, my paper will highlight the role of transnational operatic exchanges in support of Austria’s multinational concept of state. Recent research has challenged traditional narratives that have tended to reduce the political role of nineteenth-century opera to a tool of political nationalism. Instead, my paper examines the extent to which the Empire supported opera (both the form and the repertoire) as a means to create cultural and intellectual connections between its different lands and peoples, as well as between its political centre and its peripheries. My work responds to two distinct fields of scholarship: the contextual analysis of opera production and its reception; and new trends in Habsburg history, which have moved away from a narrow focus on ethnic and linguistic conflict to examine the role of imperial identity, national hybridity, dynastic loyalty, and factors such as religion, class and gender that cut across national ideology. Especially Italian opera was central to building cultural bridges across the Empire’s different crownlands and nationalities, becoming a distinctive feature of the monarchy’s dynastic representation. axel.koerner@uni-leipzig.de

9.45 – 10.30 Bedřich Smetana as a Musical Reviewer

Dr. Sandra Bergmannová, National Museum – Bedřich Smetana Museum sandra.bergmannova@nm.cz

In addition to correspondence and diaries, Bedřich Smetana’s writings also include a not quite well-known, but in consideration of his universality substantial set of his own literary texts. This is a critical activity in the period press, especially in the 1860s, when Smetana returned from Gothenburg in Sweden and became actively involved in Prague’s cultural life. The composer’s consistent journalistic activity from May 2, 1864 to April 15, 1865 in the Národní listy is particularly worth of attention. Smetana’s articles and reports in this Czech newspaper reflect the musical culture in Prague, not only in the field of opera or concert production, but the composer also comments on newly published sheet music. This time we will focus on Smetana as the author of reviews of opera performances. His music-critical activity in Národní listy falls in the period before he was elected chief conductor of the Czech opera in the provisional Czech Theatre. It gives us not just a view of the operatic works performed at that time and their interpretation, but is interesting as well in the context of the composer’s later work as an artistic director of the opera, whose activities included proposing of the repertoire.

11.00 – 11.45 Smetana and Operatic Classicism: Gluck and Mozart at the Provisional Theater

Prof. Dr. Martin Nedbal, University of Kansas

In the 1860s and 1870s, eighteenth-century operatic classics, i.e., works by Gluck and Mozart (specifically Orfeo ed Euridice, Iphigénie en Aulide, Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, and Die Zauberflöte), represented an ideologically significant portion of the repertoire of the Czech Provisional Theater. By paying attention to these works, Czech artists and audiences could both express their appreciation of historical operatic developments that were considered mainstream and emphasize the links of these developments to the uniquely Czech national culture. This combination of cosmopolitan and national impulses in approaching works by Gluck and Mozart also characterized the activities of Bedřich Smetana, both as a critic for Národní listy and as the music director of the Provisional Theater. As this paper shows, Smetana brought a crucial ideological aspect into Gluck’s and Mozart’s operas performed during his tenure at the Provisional Theater: the concept of Werktreue, an explicit and heavily publicized reverence for the classical composers’ presumed original intentions. An exploration of the forms in which Gluck’s and Mozart’s operas were performed under Smetana (reflected in performance reviews in Prague’s Czech and German press and in the performance materials from the period, e.g., manuscript prompter’s and censor’s librettos and conducting scores) shows that Smetana both adapted these works to fit contemporaneous tastes and aimed at “historically informed” productions. As is clear from mid-nineteenth-century Czech music criticism, historicist approaches to classical operas were viewed as nationally significant because they brought out the idea that Bohemia had a more authentic and unique perspective regarding Gluck, who grew up in the region, and Mozart, who supposedly achieved his greatest successes in Prague. Smetana’s historicist interests, albeit not always too dogmatic, therefore imbued his productions of classical operas with national symbolism. mnedbal@ku.edu

11.45 – 12.30 Wie wird man Nationalkomponist?

Das Beispiel Ivan Zajc im Vergleich zu Bedřich Smetana

Dr. David Vondráček, Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Die Werke des kroatischen Komponisten Ivan Zajc, insbesondere seine Operetten wie Mannschaft an Bord, gehörten zum Kernrepertoire des Prozatímní divadlo (Interimstheater) während Smetanas Zeit, doch nur selten wurden sie von der Wissenschaft thematisiert. Dabei gäbe es durchaus Parallelen zwischen beiden Komponisten. Ähnlich wie Smetana in Böhmen, gilt Zajc nach seiner Rückkehr aus Wien nach Zagreb 1870 als eigentlicher Begründer der kroatischen Nationalmusik. Und es war Ivan Zajc, der 1873 erstmals Smetanas Prodaná nevěsta in Zagreb auf die Bühne brachte. Die Unterschiede liegen jedoch in der Musiksprache der Komponisten. Diese ist bei Zajc vor allem an italienischen Vorbildern geschult (Studium in Mailand), sodass sie als Folie („Mainstream“) dienen kann, vor der sich das Spezifisch-Nationale abhebt. Diese These möchte ich anhand von Beispielen aus Zajc’ tragischen wie auch komischen (National-)Opern herausarbeiten, von denen Mislav 1871 auch in Prag gegeben wurde. Bei so unterschiedlichen Komponisten ist zu erwarten, dass die Ergebnisse des Vergleichs komplex ausfallen und nicht bei der Frage der direkten Beeinflussung stehen bleiben, die – trotz aller Berührungspunkte zwischen den beiden – ohnehin wenig wahrscheinlich erscheint. vondracek@udu.cas.cz