INSPIRING CZECH SYMPHONIC MUSIC

This is a classic performance. In fact, I don't think it has many serious contenders in the catalogue. The main characters are excellent. Gabriela Benackova as Marenka gives a splendidly warm characterization and the slightly sharp sounds when she is singing at the top end of the spectrum is no more than a quibble; none at all about Peter Dvorsky as Jenik or Miroslav Kopp as Vasek.

In fact, there are no serious objections to anything on this set. Kosler gives an eminently energetic and vigorous performance (the famous orchestral sections, for instance, are marvelous), and the rest of the cast doesn't really have one weak link.

Sound quality is perhaps not faultless (it is a little clangy in a way which might lead you to believe that the recording is a little older than it actually is), but nothing to complain seriously about. Strongly recommended. --G.D. Buy it now

SMETANA : THE BARTERED BRIDE

As soon as conductor Adam Fischer engages the warp engines and shifts the well known overture into hyperdrive, we know we're in for an exciting performance of Bedrich Smetana's masterpiece, The Bartered Bride. As soon as the wonderful Lucia Popp begins lamenting her impending arranged marriage to the son of the rich landowner Micha from the neighboring village, we know that this will also be a lyrical and emotionally satisfying performance. And as soon as we see the traditional stage sets and costumes, we know that we are witnessing a performance conceived and designed before today's European penchant for updating opera to some strange locale with minimal sets and costumes. This staging of The Bartered Bride is traditional and revels in it.

Filmed live at the Wiener Staatsoper in 1982, the appearance of the townsfolk, wearing their traditional Bohemian costumes, exhuberantly singing and dancing, serves to quickly draw us into the early 1870s and this engaging comedy of love nearly thwarted but ultimately triumphant. Smetana was a confirmed Wagnerian who bridled under the usual criticism of that breed: Wagnerians are great at your typical end-of-the-world conflagration, but they are about as funny as a slow tour of a sausage factory. Smetana set out to prove that he could do funny. The first few years following its 1871 premiere, now in its familiar three act version, were largely unsuccessful. The opera failed to find its audience. All that changed when the libretto was translated into German by Max Kalbeck. It became the basis for the subsequent wildly successful performances at the Theater an der Wien in 1893. It is that German translation that is used here for Otto Schenk's 1982 production.

The late Czech singer Lucia Popp stars as Marenka (Marie). A favorite ever since I first heard her in Klemperer's brilliant 1964 recording of Mozart's The Magic Flute, her ability to fully inhabit a role is in evidence here. Her singing is as lyrically lovely as ever. Siegfried Jerusalem is her beloved Hans. Heinz Zednik is Wenzel, the boy she is forced to marry. Karl Ridderbusch is Kezal, the disreputable town matchmaker. These three Wagnerian singers are a reminder of the roots of this opera and they are splendid. The entire cast is excellent. Superior casting coupled with traditional costumes and lovely set design, yields a positive result: we are pulled, unresisting, into the world of this opera, and we are saddened to leave it when it ends. That's the signature of an exemplary performance. The Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper play beautifully for conductor Adam Fischer. Total time of this DVD is 155 minutes. Sound is in PCM stereo and DTS 5.1, both sounding clear and full. The picture has been digitally remastered and is clear with no artifacts given its age. There are the usual DGG languages, menus and previews.

This is a splendid performance of a great comic opera. It will brighten your day. Strongly recommended. - Mike Birma Buy it now

OVERTURE TO "THE BARTERED BRIDE"

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)

The great wave of revolutionary nationalism which swept. Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came to the Czech people as an immensely fertilizing and liberating force. Among its many artistic fruits were Smetana’s patriotic tone poems (the most popular being ‘The Moldau’) and his nine operas, including “The Bartered Bride”

Smetana is often considered the father of Czech musical nationalism. He was only twenty-four when the liberal-patriotic revolutions of 1848-1849 swept Europe like a prairie fire, stirring Czech patriots to an unsuccessful revolution of their own, and launching Smetana on his career as a nationalist composer. From 1863 to 1866 he worked on his second opera. The Bartered Bride, a simple comedy of Czech life in a style strongly influenced by Czech folk music. To Czech listeners, “The Bartered bride” is much more than an opera. It has become almost a symbol of Czech people themselves. Happily “The Bartered Bride” captivates even non-Czech listeners with its melodic invention, its orchestral brilliance and its temperamental brio.

The music of the Overture is taken largely from the lively finale of Act II, when the townspeople witness the signing of a contract in which the hero deliberately gives the (false) impression that he is selling his claim to his own fiancée. The Overture opens with a brilliant flourish for full orchestra, a followed by a lively scherzo like figure spun out very delicately by the second violins alone. Presently they are joined by the first violins and finally by the lower strings, building up to a climax of excitement on the crest of which a syncopated dance figure, another chief theme of the Overture is heard. There is considerable development of both the dance theme and the scherzo-like figure. The whole is punctuated and concluded by reappearances of the Overture’s opening flourish.