Jana \u0160rejma Ka\u010d\u00edrkov\u00e1 (Jitka). Photo: Marek Olbrzymek<\/p>\n The story, along with the claim that Dalibor learned to play the violin in the castle tower, was picked up by Josef Wenzig, who submitted to Smetana a proposal for a German libretto even before the premiere of The Bartered Bride.<\/em> The composer sketched the first act in October 1865 and completed the whole thing two years later \u2013 with an unabashed sense that he had created his life\u2019s work. He was all the more upset by the cool reception of Dalibor<\/em>, which after its premiere on 16 May 1868 at the Prague Provisional Theatre was labelled an \u201canti-national\u201d opera , full of treacherous references to Wagner\u2019s hated oeuvre. Despite hasty alterations, Dalibor<\/em> disappeared from the repertoire for nearly twenty years and did not return to the public\u2019s good graces until Smetana\u2019s death. In the late nineteenth century it conquered Vienna and Germany. It appeared probably only once in Warsaw, in 1902. Popular in Czechia, after the WW2, in the 1960s, it slowly began to make its presence felt in the West, mainly through guest appearances of Czech companies (though not only thanks to them: in 1977 Harold C. Schonberg wrote warmly about it after a concert performance at Carnegie Hall, with New York ensembles and Teresa Kubiak as Milada, alongside Nicolai Gedda in the title role). The opera has been attracting increasing interest recently in German-speaking countries, being advertised as a Czech Lohengrin<\/em> or Czech Fidelio<\/em>. In 2024 it inaugurated the Moravian celebrations of the Year of Czech Music at the Jan\u00e1\u010dek Theatre in Brno, in a new staging by David Pountney.<\/p>\n Dalibor<\/em> is an undoubted masterpiece, although Smetana\u2019s unparalleled melodic invention and sonic imagination is not always matched by the coherence of the dramatic concept. The narrative gets bogged down here and there, and sometimes strays into psychological improbability. In the first act we have an astonishing coup de foudre from Milada, who seems to be acting as a witness for the prosecution in the court scene, only to fall madly in love with Dalibor at the sight of the perpetrator of the ill-fated raid. There is an intriguing homoerotic subtext in Dalibor\u2019s affection for the fiddler Zden\u011bk, who was killed by the burgrave \u2013 it runs through the opera until its finale, in which the knight, having rapturously reciprocated Milada\u2019s love, dies with the names of both of them on his lips.<\/p>\n It is, therefore, not surprising that the producers of the Brno staging decided to make some cuts in the score, return to the original ending, and make some \u201cimprovements\u201d to the Czech version of the libretto, written by Erwin \u0160pindler. Less convincing is the decision to divide the three-act opera into two parts (before the first set change in the second act), if only because Jitka\u2019s meeting with her beloved does not match, either musically or dramaturgically, the material of the first act. What appeals the least to the imagination is the director\u2019s overall vision \u2013 Pountney has come up with the idea that Dalibor<\/em> is a thoroughly political work and, worse still, decided to get this concept across to us extremely chaotically. The combination of allusions to the events of the Prague Spring with references to the figure of Bobby Sands and other IRA members who went on the tragic hunger strike in 1981, fighting for the status of political prisoners, does not add up to a universal picture of a struggle for the freedom of an oppressed nation, let alone provoke the audience to reflect on whether Dalibor was a brave defender of the weak or simply an ordinary villain. Especially since such reflections have nothing to do with the story told by Smetana.<\/p>\n Csilla Boross (Milada) and Peter Berger (Dalibor). Photo: Marek Olbrzymek<\/p>\n And that story is intricate enough and at times incoherent enough for a responsible director to resist the temptation to encase is in a plethora of additional meanings. Yet in Dalibor<\/em> Pountney, an artist with an huge body of work and some truly outstanding productions to his credit, has taken dozens of his own and others\u2019 ideas from the past half-century, and stitched together a veritable theatrical Frankenstein-like monstrosity \u2013 with the help of Robert Innes Hopkins (set design) and Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes). The first act brings to mind the beginning of Lohengrin<\/em> in any provincial German theatre: glass, steel, ranks of police in riot gear, video projections, a courtroom \u2013 seemingly abstract, but with the emblem of the double-tailed Bohemian lion \u2013 King Vladislav in a tyrant\u2019s uniform straight from an operetta, and Jitka, a girl as innocent as the water lily in Smetana\u2019s vision, transformed into a seasoned militia fighter. The updated battle scenes are reminiscent of analogous episodes from stagings by Calixto Bieito, Olivier Py and even Mariusz Treli\u0144ski, but in a cost-cutting version (apart from the sizeable arsenal of machine guns). The Fidelio<\/em>-inspired prison scenes with Dalibor and Milada in male disguise, on the other hand, become a cheesy allegory with a few unexpectedly realistic touches (the burglar locksmith\u2019s tool kit in Milada\u2019s backpack). Zden\u011bk\u2019s ghost looks like a caricature of the one-winged Gottfried the swan from the Welsh Lohengrin<\/em> directed by Antony McDonald \u2013 also barefoot, but wearing a too tight suit and with a bloodied wing. As if it were not enough for Pountney that the opera ends badly, he has V\u00edtek, Jitka\u2019s beloved, die at the beginning of Act Two \u2013 without any convincing justification later on in the narrative.<\/p>\n Fortunately, everything was more than made up for by the musical side of the production. I decided to go to see the penultimate performance in this run because of its almost entirely Czech and Slovak cast, artists who understand Smetana, know what they sing about and know how to do it. Contrary to what might have been thought, not far behind in this respect was the Hungarian Csilla Boross, a singer well acquainted with the repertoire, having been a resident artist at the National Theatre in Brno years ago. Her dark, rounded dramatic soprano is perfect for the big and, at times, fiendishly difficult role of Milada, and her minor problems with Czech pronunciation were more than made up for by her musicality and expressive characterisation. Peter Berger triumphed in the title role. His is a jugendlichen Heldentenor in the peculiarly \u201cSlavic\u201d version, resonant, healthy, with a beautiful golden honeyed tone. Berger is also a fine actor and has an excellent stage presence. In many respects he can already be considered a worthy successor to Beno Blachut, the legendary performer of the role. I\u2019m very glad I got to see a performance featuring Svatopluk Sem, who sang the dilemmas of King Vladislav with a bass-baritone that was bright, supple and free at the top, with a typically \u201cSmetanian\u201d phrasing that enabled him to breathe much more humanity into his character than the director had envisaged. An outstanding Jitka came from Jana \u0160rejma Ka\u010d\u00edrkov\u00e1, aptly cast with Ond\u0159ej Kopl\u00edk as V\u00edtek (a lovely duet of these two at the beginning of the second act).<\/p>\n Peter Berger. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek<\/p>\n However, all these marvels would not have been possible had it not been for the superb orchestra, the phenomenal chorus and Tom\u00e1\u0161 Hanus, a reliable conductor in this repertoire, who conducted Dalibor<\/em> not only with exuberant energy, but also \u2013 perhaps above all \u2013 with an uncommon sense of the treasures contained in this score. Hanus does not waste time on pondering whether Dalibor was a villain or an angel: he makes sure he brings out from the brilliant orchestral texture everything that shines differently; accentuates each of the motifs that would inspire Dvo\u0159\u00e1k himself; makes Zden\u011bk and his singing violin sound not only in the words of the protagonist, but throughout the piece, in each string part \u2013 as a metaphor for the nation\u2019s identity born through art, the most powerful weapon in the Czechs\u2019 struggle against oppression.<\/p>\n In this respect Pountney was right. Dalibor<\/em> is a thoroughly political opera. However, it did not occur to him that this policy was pursued with music, not guns.<\/p>\n Translated by: Anna Kijak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dalibor the knight did really exist and was an ambiguous figure, to say the least. He came from an old family from Kozojedy, Central Bohemia. In 1483 his father, Ale\u0161 of Kozojedy, acquired the Mnet\u011b\u0161 estate in the Litom\u011b\u0159ice district, near the village of Ploskovice, where one of the first peasant revolts in the region … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-mangusta","4":"post-8020","6":"format-standard","7":"category-posts-in-english","8":"category-wedrowki-operowe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8020"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8028,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020\/revisions\/8028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/9_olb3277_53498185418_o-scaled-1.jpg\")
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