Czech Opera

            Turmoil in countries can have many effects on the output of art. Sometimes wars of national liberation can be an amazing catalyst for the development or validation of national styles. By the same token, political unrest, cultural repression (especially in language) and of course uncertain economy can have a very retardant effect on the arts.  The Czech-speaking people have lived under several rulers since the late Renaissance. While they were included in the Hapsburg Empire, their native culture was to be tempered by more Germanic elements including language, music and dance.  This issue was coupled with the fact that there was no Czech aristocracy who would normally be responsible for the funding and patronage of the arts, particularly opera.  Therefore; it is not surprising that Czech opera is seen as a “late-comer” to the theatrical world, with its true beginnings in the establishment of the ‘Provisional Theatre’ with a handful of works by Skroup, reaching maturity with Smetana and achieving world wide notoriety with Janacek.

            It should not be thought that opera was absent from Czech-speaking lands. An Italian opera company occupied the Estates Theatre for some time before it was disbanded in 1807. Even then opera did not disappear, as a German company came in to replace the scattered Italians, in fact; the composer Skroup served as the second music director for the Estates in 1827.  But aside from the composer; Skroup and a few of his contemporaries, Czech language opera was largely displaced by the works of Mozart’s Italian pieces as well as later Wagnerian operas and musical dramas.  It was to eventually be the Czech middle class theatre-goers who “held sentimentality for rural life” that would seek to bring out genuinely Czech culture both as a means of preserving national identity and aligning themselves with their national proletariat.

            Internet information on the composer Frantisek Skroup is frustratingly limited. Most of the reputable biographical cites are written in Czech and Google’s language tools are still not sufficient enough to render an intelligible narrative.  The parts of the biography that are readable do seem to corroborate the Wikipedia article that contained two paragraphs on the composer as well as a listing of his works by genre. Skroup is most well known for composing the piece “Where is My Home” which is now used as the Czech national anthem. He was born in Osice and educated in Prague where he earned a living as a choir-boy and flautist while studying music with the choirmaster Franz Volkert.  He was the composer of several Singspiels as well as a handful of operas, many of them in German. Skroup did write opera on Czech themes, the piece Libusin Snatek (Libuse’s Marriage, a subject very popular in Europe which inspired many works) is cited as an early vernacular piece to achieve some acclaim, but as the author John Tyrrell points out: “The early history of vernacular opera tens to centre not on quality but on claims for primacy.” Therefore; Skroup is notable for his role in the musical development of the Czech speaking lands, but as far as a nationalistic style is concerned; he was far too submerged in the Wagnerian revolution to produce anything truly native.

            The composer Bedrich Smetana would be the composer to really occupy history’s notion as the first nationalistic composer of the Czech-speaking territories. His first opera Branibori v Cechach (The Brandenburgers in Bohemia) is ripe with political messages to the middle class. The piece is set in the Middle Ages and tells the story of a rioting mob that expels the foreign Burghers from the land. While the political message was well received it did not establish a national style, this was accomplished with his next and most well known piece The Bartered Bride.  The Bartered Bride is notable for its ease of hearing on the part of the listener, using uncomplicated counterpoint and mostly singable tunes easily digested by the “unsophisticated listener.” The opera has a heavy reliance on popular dances, namely the polka and slow waltz. Smetana opposed the use of directly quoting folk-songs for his opera (although there are a few instances of this) but he did use folk-style melodies during his pieces. Though Smetana went a long-way to the development of a national style, at his heart he still possessed a German education (which was evidence by the number of Fairy Tale operas he composed) and his journey to the composition of Czech works was a long one. It is in the composer; Janacek that we see a fully developed Czech-style.

            Leos Janacek was born in 1854, and although he received most of his musical education from a monastery, he also pursued his musical education through Prague as well as Vienna (in the hopes of bettering himself as an educator for his own music college).  Like other nationalist/ethnomusicologists such as Bartok and Kodaly, he was an ardent student of folk music. He composed a great deal before turning to opera, but it was not until his most well known piece; Jenufa that he became such a dominating figure in the canon of Czech composers.  Jenufa is a gruesome story about lovers, a woman’s disfigurement and the murder of an infant. It originally appeared in a censored version that seemed to appeal to the audiences, who heard it, later it was performed in its original form.  Through the international success of Jenufa, Janacek emerged from being seen as just an ethnomusicologist to a legitimate composer on the level of Sibelius, Mussorgsky and Bartok.  Janacek would go on to write some very successful operas such as Osud (1904), The Cunning Little Vixen (1924, which was featured in the Robert Morgan text on 20^th century music) and From the House of the Dead (1927).  It is very interesting that opera, with essentially Italian origins, could be used as such an instrument of national pride for countries all over Europe.  Of course, this is a theatrical style that had to be tempered with the regional folk song and studies of rural music. Still, the success of composers like Janacek and his ilk is a testament to the power of indigenous style.