If someone says "Smetana opera," you'll automatically think of The Bartered Bride. But Smetana wrote nine operas in all, impressive considering the fact that he had very few predecessors in the realm of Czech opera, and he preferred this one to The Bartered Bride and was a bit annoyed by the latter's consistent success. Dramatically, Dalibor is not the elegant marriage of words and music that The Bartered Bride is, but it's an extremely colorful score that looks both backward to Beethoven and forward to Dvorák and Janácek ...
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If someone says "Smetana opera," you'll automatically think of The Bartered Bride. But Smetana wrote nine operas in all, impressive considering the fact that he had very few predecessors in the realm of Czech opera, and he preferred this one to The Bartered Bride and was a bit annoyed by the latter's consistent success. Dramatically, Dalibor is not the elegant marriage of words and music that The Bartered Bride is, but it's an extremely colorful score that looks both backward to Beethoven and forward to Dvorák and Janácek at the same time. The Beethoven element lies in the plot, an energetic, but unwieldy, tale of prison love and (failed) rescue. The music is melodically compelling, and the orchestration is often brilliant: sample the radiant Act I, Scene 3 (CD 1, track 5), where Milada, the eventual lover of the imprisoned Dalibor, at first accuses him of murder; her eventual transformation is hinted at in an entirely unusual way. The opera is held together with a network of meaning-bearing themes...
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Add this copy of Smetana: Dalibor to cart. $39.62, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2015 by ONYX CLASSICS-INGH: 17953329.
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