AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

Benacková (Mařenka), Marie Veselá (Ludmila), Marie Mrázová (Háta), Peter Dvorsky (Jeník), Miroslav Kopp (Varek), Alfred Hampel (Circus Master), Jindrich Jindrák (Krušina), Richard Novák (Kecal), Jaroslav Horácek (Mícha) Personalities | Bedřich Smetana | High Romantic | Opera ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1824–84, Czech In 1866, the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana won a national competition with his first of eight operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia. In this work, written for the National Theatre in Prague where he was conductor, he revealed his skill in writing orchestral music, his strong dramatic sense and his understanding of the cadences ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Be’-der-zhikh Sma’-ta-na) 1824–84 Czech Composer Smetana was the founding father of the Czech national musical revival. Born to middle-class parents on 2 March 1824, he showed considerable talent as a pianist by the time he was six. He went to study in Prague in 1839, subsequently making a living as a teacher and player. In 1848 he opened a music ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

b. 1933 English mezzo-soprano Baker studied in London, and made her debut in Smetana’s The Secret in Oxford in 1956. She sang Handel roles early in her career, and made a particular impression as Purcell’s Dido, a role she recorded several times. At Covent Garden, where she first appeared as Hermia in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

the Prague Provisional Theatre orchestra until 1871. He lived in great poverty in these years, but acquired a range of musical experiences, including the music of Wagner, Smetana, Liszt and Verdi, and soon began to find his own voice. A decisive moment for his reputation in Prague came with the successful premiere of his cantata The ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

orchestra as a violist. Over the following nine years, he performed a catholic mix of repertoire from Italy, Germany and France as well as his native land. Bedřich Smetana (1824–84) had already blazed a trail with The Bartered Bride (1883–86) by the time Dvořák began serious operatic work. Both shared a fascination with the use of characteristic national melodies ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

in 1899. Hollywood has used it to dramatic effect in two grandiose action films, The Hunt For Red October and Die Hard 2. Introduction | Late Romantic | Classical Personalities | Bedřich Smetana | Late Romantic | Classical ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

created the part of Isolde. Garrigues could not face continuing in opera without him, and retired soon after he died. Introduction | High Romantic | Opera Personalities | Bedřich Smetana | High Romantic | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Romantic

(Sta’-ne-slwaf Mon-yoosh’-ko) 1819–72 Polish composer Moniuszko was the foremost composer of operas in nineteenth-century Poland, and his national importance is equivalent to that of Bedřich Smetana(1824–84) in the Czech lands and Glinka in Russia. He studied in Minsk (1830–37) and Berlin (1837–40) and began to write stage works in the mid-1840s. His opera Halka was staged in Warsaw in 1858 to ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1850–1900, Czech Although little known today, during his lifetime Fibich was fêted as the successor to Smetana and certainly commanded operatic attention equal to Dvořák. He studied initially with his mother in Prague, then in Leipzig, Paris and Mannheim. His early adult life was far from easy, with the death of his wife less than a ...

• Opera
• High Romantic

vast country. In Czechoslovakia, Zdenek Fibich (1850–1900) promoted a Czech idiom in opera, and his work was furthered by the first of the country’s great nationalist composers, Bedřich Smetana (1824–84). Traditions, national heroes and historical themes also marked the operas of Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–72) and the Hungarian Ferenc Erkel (1810–91). In the nineteenth century, Czechoslovakia ...

• Classical
• Late Romantic

importance and the distinctness of national languages and cultures. In the Austrian Empire the rise of distinct Czech, Bohemian and Moravian cultures was epitomized by composers such as Bedřich Smetana (1824–84), Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) and Leoš Janáček (1854–1928). Arguably the most distinctive nationalism in the early part of this period was found in Russia, where the exploration and inclusion ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Late Romantic

That music has a double history – a social and a stylistic one – is amply proven by its development in the second half of the nineteenth century. Its progress was marked, though not entirely determined, by the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. There were perceptible changes of emphasis, not only in concert and operatic life from ...

• Stage & Scene
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

the Hofoper in Vienna in 1897. Mahler spent the next decade at the theatre performing a wide variety of operas, including works by Wagner, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, Mozart and Gluck. He was determined to achieve the best possible performances and his insistence on the highest standards often led him into confrontation. He wanted to make the ...