Download BEDŘICH SMETANA The Bartered Bride, Opera in Three Acts Cast

BEDŘICH SMETANA
The Bartered Bride, Opera in Three Acts
Cast of Characters
Mařenka, a young village maid: Soprano
Jeník, a stranger who loves her: Tenor
Krušina, Mařenka’s father: Baritone
Ludmila, his wife and Mařenka’s mother: Soprano
Kecal, a marriage broker: Bass
Vašek, son of a local landowner: Tenor
Mícha, Vašek’s father: Bass
Háta, his wife and Vašek’s mother: Mezzo-soprano
Ringmaster: Tenor
An Indian comedian: Bass
Esmeralda, a dancer and comedienne: Soprano
Villagers: Chorus
The performances of The Bartered Bride presented by the
Music Academy of the West offer an
opportunity to raise awareness about stuttering.
More than three million Americans share
the common experience of stuttering.
For more information, visit the National Stuttering
Association at we stutter.org, or the FRIENDS National
Association at friendswhostutter.org.
PROGRAM NOTES
Background
The emergence of distinct national styles was one of the most important musical developments
of the 19th century. Nowhere was this more true than in Bohemia, the country that became
today’s Czech Republic, where patriotic yearnings brought on by centuries of Austrian
domination gave rise to a particularly vital school of nationalist music. The founder and
acknowledged leader of this school was Bedřich Smetana, whose most famous work is his opera
The Bartered Bride.
Smetana led an eventful life. He had been a promising young pianist and composer when
revolution shook Prague in 1848. The uprising against Austria’s Hapsburg rulers galvanized
Smetana’s patriotic instincts, and the formerly apolitical musician now defended barricades and
wrote inspirational Czech songs and marches.
When the revolt failed, Smetana returned to the task of winning a reputation and earning a
living. His frustration in this endeavor, coupled with depression over the political situation in his
native land, eventually drove him abroad. Beginning in 1856 he lived and worked in Sweden.
But in 1861 the establishment in Prague of a National Theater dedicated to presenting Czech
plays and operas called him home. Smetana correctly sensed that a fertile period for Czech
culture was at hand, and he lost little time in writing music combining sophisticated
compositional technique with the rhythms and melodic inflections of Bohemian folk music.
Smetana’s musical nationalism found particularly happy expression in his operas. The first of
these, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, a patriotic drama telling of Czech resistance to
occupying forces from the German principality of Brandenburg in the 13th century, was
completed in 1863 but had to wait three years for a production. Meanwhile, the composer and
his librettist, a playwright named Karel Sabina, began work on a very different sort of opera.
Rather than historical figures and heroic events, the new work told a comic tale about a young
couple whose love is threatened when the local marriage broker arranges a financially
advantageous match for the girl. After various twists of plot, however, all ends well, with true
love triumphant.
Smetana was dissatisfied with Sabina’s original libretto of The Bartered Bride, which consisted
of only a single act, and sent it back to its author for revision. The collaborators worked
throughout 1864. Smetana completed the music in a piano sketch early in 1865 and
orchestrated the music over the course of the following year. The opera debuted at Prague’s
National Theater in May, 1866, not long after the initial performances of The Brandenburgers in
Bohemia. Ironically, in light of its subsequent success, it proved far less popular than Smetana
and Sabina’s first opera.
Over the next four years, composer and librettist revised The Bartered Bride several times. In
the end, they expanded the opera from two to three acts; added vocal numbers as well as
several dances; and replaced spoken dialogue with sung recitatives. Thanks largely to these
improvements, the work’s favor with Czech audiences grew steadily, but it was only during the
final decade of the 19th century that The Bartered Bride began to win the international
accolades it eventually enjoyed. Although recently overtaken by Dvořák’s Rusalka and several
operas by Leoš Janácek, The Bartered Bride was long the most famous of all Czech operas. It
remains by far the most popular of Smetana’s theatrical compositions.
Synopsis
Smetana composed the overture that prefaces The Bartered Bride in 1863, while waiting for
Sabina’s first revision of the text. It is unusual for a composer to create an operatic prelude
without a finished libretto in hand. But Smetana knew that the opera would have what he
described as “a popular character, because the plot ... is taken from village life and demands a
national treatment.” While several of the themes in the overture reappear during the opera
itself in connection with certain characters, the piece hardly relates the story of The Bartered
Bride in any detail. It does, however, convey the opera’s comic spirit, and something of its
folkloric tone.
Act I
The opera opens in a village square, where a festival is in progress. Townsfolk dance and sing,
but Mařenka, an attractive young woman, is distressed. Stealing away with Jeník, the young
man she loves, she explains that her parents intend that she marry Vašek, the simpleton son of
Mícha, a wealthy landowner. She also questions Jeník about his past, of which she knows little.
Jeník confides that his story is painful. He had been the son and heir of a prosperous
gentleman. But his mother died, and when his father remarried, his new wife drove Jeník from
their home. The couple then pledge their mutual love and fidelity in a tender duet.
Mařenka and Jeník go their separate ways. Now the girl’s parents, Krušina and Ludmila, enter
with Kecal, the local marriage broker. He promises that all has been arranged for their daughter
to wed Vašek. Krušina asks about the young man whom his daughter is to marry. Kecal
responds with an account of Vašek’s virtues.
When Mařenka approaches, Kecal informs her that he has found a husband for her. She
defiantly replies that she already has a true love and has committed herself to him. Kecal
decides to deal with Jeník directly. The village festival continues with a polka, a famous number
that was a happy late addition to the opera.
Act II
The action shifts to a tavern, where a chorus of villagers sings a drinking song. Jeník counters by
declaring love a greater joy than drink can provide, and Kecal responds that money is a more
dependable source of happiness. The point unresolved, the villagers join in a furiant, a rollicking
Czech folk dance.
Vašek, the young man Kecal would have Mařenka marry, arrives on the scene. Awkward and
stuttering, he cuts a decidedly unimpressive figure. (Today we understand that stuttering is not
a laughing matter. 19th-century audiences evidently considered Vašek’s occasional difficulty
articulating his words in a more comical light than this impairment deserves.) Realizing who he
is, Mařenka warns him that his prospective bride is a notorious deceiver who will betray and kill
him. The lad, who does not know that he is speaking with Mařenka herself, easily falls for this
ruse. Mařenka then tells him that she knows a girl who loves him. Allowing Vašek to believe
that she is that very person, she gets him to renounce the wicked Mařenka he has come to
marry.
Kecal takes Jeník aside and urges him to seek a wife elsewhere. Besides, he knows a girl with
money and can procure her for Jeník. To sweeten the deal, Kecal offers to pay Jeník to give up
Mařenka. Jeník bargains the price up to triple the original offer, then accepts upon one
condition: Mařenka must marry no one but the son of the landowner Mícha. When the villagers
learn the bargain Jeník has struck with Kecal, they are shocked that the young man would
barter away his prospective bride for money.
Act III
On the village square, Vašek laments that the girl he was sent to marry turns out to be a
murderous shrew. His mournful meditation is interrupted by the arrival of a circus troupe. Their
leader introduces the performers and announces that their biggest attraction is a bear that will
dance with the beautiful Esmeralda. Unfortunately, the performer who plays the bear has
become too drunk to go on. Esmeralda, having noticed Vašek’s admiring glances, seductively
extols the artist’s life. She and the Ringmaster then easily persuade the boy to take on the
bear’s role.
After the circus troupe departs to prepare their performance, Vašek’s parents, Mícha and Háta,
arrive with Kecal. To their surprise, Vašek refuses to sign a contract binding him to marry
Mařenka. Soon Mařenka and her parents enter. Vašek recognizes Mařenka from their earlier
encounter and announces his willingness to marry her after all. She, however, insists that she
needs to reflect.
Left alone, Mařenka sings of her grief over Jeník’s apparent betrayal. Jeník appears, but she
angrily refuses to hear his explanation. When she declares her intention to go through with the
marriage to Vašek, Jeník’s amusement provokes her further.
The villagers enter, and Mařenka announces that she will marry Vašek. But Krušina and Háta
see Jeník and clearly recognize him. More surprisingly, the young man addresses Krušina as
“father.” Kecal is the first to understand that Jeník is Krušina’s estranged elder son. Citing the
agreement he has signed with the marriage broker, Jeník proclaims that Krušina has two sons,
and Mařenka must choose which of them to marry. Mařenka now understands the winning
game Jeník has played and rushes joyfully to him. All except Kecal celebrate the happy
outcome, but the merriment is interrupted by a warning that the circus bear has escaped. The
creature arrives, causing a moment of general fright, but turns out only to be Vašek in costume.
Mícha is reconciled with his long-lost son and gives his blessing to the marriage of Mařenka and
Jeník.