2024-08-16 14:03:08
On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Bedřich Smetana’s birth, Supraphon released a 17-CD box with his complete opera works. For the first and last time, the author’s operas as a whole appeared 40 years ago on LP as part of a four-part extensive project of Smetan’s ensemble work, prepared on the occasion of the Year of Czech Music in 1984.
The new set of Bedřich Smetana’s operas contains seven separately packaged 2CDs plus one 3CD with detailed information on the individual operas, a forty-page booklet with a summary study, photo documentation and a link to the libretto for download in Czech and English. At the same time, the recordings are available digitally in high quality.
“The box includes all of Smetana’s completed opera works, including one that remains only a fragment,” mentions Vladan Drvota from the Supraphon publishing house of an opera called Viola. The composer began to compose it in 1874, but put the work aside and returned to Viola only at the end of his life.
According to Drvota, the criteria for selecting the recordings was primarily artistic and technical quality, as well as the fact that some were no longer physically available on the Czech or international market.
Eight of the composer’s completed stage works were part of the repertoire of the National Theater in the past. On the ensemble’s recordings, the specific sound of his orchestra formed by conductors, some of whom have come to be seen in retrospect as Smetán’s specialists, is recorded. It is about Zdeňk Chalabala, whose presentation the box contains the opera Čertova stěna, Jaroslav Krombholc conducting Dalibor or Zdeňk Košler. Under his baton, the orchestra plays the operas Tajemství, Libuše and a fragment of Viola.
According to Vladan Drvota, the personal preoccupation with the given score is also characteristic of the conductors Jan Hus Tiché, who recorded Brandenburg in Bohemia, and František Jílek, who led the orchestra during the recording of the opera Two Widows.
These images can be compared to the recording of Hubička, in which the orchestra of the Janáček Opera in Brno performs under the baton of František Vajnar, or the Czech Philharmonic. In 1982, she filmed The Bartered Bride also with Zdenek Košler.
“When listening to all these recordings, we can create a comprehensive picture of Smetana’s interpretation of the time in which singing generations alternated,” points out Vladan Drvota.
Among them are, for example, sopranos Milada Šubrtová, Naďa Šormová, Marcela Machotková and Libuše Domanínská, bass-baritone Ladislav Mráz, bassist Eduard Haken or tenor Ivo Žídek.
Books were also published this year to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, for example Milena Štráfeldová’s novel Friedrich said Bedřich or Smetana’s biography written by Pavel Kosatík. The Theater under Palmovka in Prague prepared a new production of The Sold Bride. As is the tradition, Smetana’s works opened the Prague Spring Festival, followed by Smetana’s Litomyšl, where it was possible to see all of the author’s operas. This year’s anniversary celebrations will be joined by a live-action biopic of Smetana directed by Marek Najbrt, which will premiere in the fall.
Bedřich Smetana was born on March 2, 1824 in Litomyšl, died on May 12, 1884 in Prague. He was an important composer of the Romantic period. Among his best-known works are the opera Bartered Bride, the cycle of symphonic poems My Homeland or the String Quartet No. 1 in E minor From my Life.
Video: A sample of the new Smetano set
The complete opera work by Bedřich Smetana was released by Supraphon on 17 CDs. | Video: Supraphon