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 ...

So do we exchange jolly peasants for glowering apparatchiks? Hardly – this is as entertaining a version of Smetana’s opera as you could wish, but the celebration of Czech nationalism has extra edge ...

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 ...

The Czechiest features of The Bartered Bride – cornerstone of Czech opera and the first to go international after premiering in 1866 – are in the music rather than the story or setting. No accident: ...

Unlock access to every one of the hundreds of articles published daily on BroadwayWorld by logging in with one click. Smetana and the librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who expected ...

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 ...