BOSTON — As I listen to the overture of Bedřich Smetana’s "The Bartered Bride" in preparation for my call with Boston Midsummer Opera music director and conductor Susan Davenny Wyner, I sense ...

Young Mařenka is madly in love with Jeník, but her father has a better catch in mind for her... From Prague’s National Theatre, Czech film and stage director Alice Nellis revisits Bedřich Smetana’s ...

Bedrich Smetana wrote music so clearly rooted in his Czech homeland that it would be easy to define him -- narrowly -- as a musical nationalist. But in fact, his achievement goes far deeper than that.

2 Video: RIDE THE CYCLONE at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant We haven't seen a lot of Smetana's The Bartered Bride in the UK recently. Bohemia's best-loved opera is rapidly becoming one of the ...

First staged in 1998, Daniel Slater’s production of Smetana’s Czech nationalist classic sets the action in the early 1970s. So, when the inhabitants of this Bohemian community urge one another to ...

In an Act One duet, Marenka and Jenik (Christiane Oelze and Ales Briscein) pledge their love, after learning that Marenka's parents have promised her to someone else. Marenka (Christiane Oelze) sings ...

The Bartered Bride was Smetana's second opera. His first, a drama called The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, was an early success in Prague — but quickly disappeared. With The Bartered Bride, it was ...

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 ...

BOSTON — As I listen to the overture of Bedřich Smetana’s "The Bartered Bride" in preparation for my call with Boston Midsummer Opera music director and conductor Susan Davenny Wyner, I sense ...

Marenka sings a far different duet in Act Two, seducing the hapless Vasek (Ales Voracek) without letting him know who she really is. Bedrich Smetana wrote music so clearly rooted in his Czech homeland ...

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 ...