Box Set Deep-Dive, Smetana's Complete Operas on Supraphon

First musical impressions, like first loves, tend to forge a permanent place in one’s heart. With Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884), generally considered to be the father of Czech music, certainly of Czech opera, my childhood epiphany was via a transistor radio in our back garden. At thirteen or so I was already a keen music buff but when ‘Sarka’ from Smetana’s cycle of tone patriotic poems Má vlast unexpectedly stormed into earshot (under Rafael Kubelík) I was dumbfounded. Here was a piece that approximated in its effect the most thrilling film score: the sweep of it, the passion, frequent dance rhythms, suspense and, come the hammering close, the sudden finality. I was infatuated, still am in fact. So I’ll open by saying that for me this magnificent set of Smetana’s complete operas is a sort of Má vlast for the stage, the dances (there are many to savour) and tone poetry supplemented by rich fund of wonderful melodies. I’m not Czech myself, but for the duration of this collection, as a listener, I may as well be.

Smetana’s entrée into the world of opera was auspicious. In 1861 the announcement that a Provisional Theatre was to be built in Prague promised a home for Czech opera. Smetana saw an opportunity to compose in a way that would reflect the Czech national character, similar to the portrayals of Russian life in Glinka's operas. Smetana hoped that he might be considered for the theatre's conductorship, but the conservative faction in charge of the project considered him a 'dangerous modernist', in thrall to avant garde composers such as Liszt and Wagner (which in many respects he was).

Smetana entered a competition organised by Count Jan von Harrach, which offered prizes of 600 florins each for the best comic and historical operas based on Czech culture. With no useful model on which to base his work - Czech opera as a genre scarcely existed - Smetana had to create his own style. He engaged Karel Sabina as his librettist, and received Sabina's text in February 1862, a story of the thirteenth-century invasion of Bohemia by Otto of Brandenburg.

In April 1863 he submitted the score under the title of The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (1862-1863) the opening of which anticipates the stormy vistas of Má vlast. The gorgeous string writing that opens the scene three aria featuring Ludiše, the Mayor of Prague’s daughter (soprano Milada Šubrtová, Disc 1, Track 3) whereas the reflective woodwinds opening to Act 2 (Track 15) pre-echoes ‘Blánik’, again from Má vlast. Supraphon’s newly refurbished 1963 recording under the vivid baton of Jan Hus Tichý gives the music its best possible chance.

Smetana’s next – and most famous – opera, The Bartered Bride (1863-1866) tells the story of how true love prevails over the combined efforts of ambitious parents and a scheming marriage broker. Supraphon’s 1980-1981 recording is one of a number in the set directed by Zdeněk Košler (on this occasion the Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra), alive in every bar and superbly sung. The Overture, ‘Furiant’ and ‘Polka’ (the last in its original choral version) are well enough known, but I’d suggest as a sampling point the first track on the second CD, Act 2, Scene 4, a lively duet between the marriage broker (bass Richard Novák) and Micha’s son from his first marriage (tenor Peter Dvorský), fine singing of some lyrical and vigorous music.

Dalibor (1865-1867, revised 1870), Smetana’s third opera, is about a Czech knight who took part in an uprising in Ploskovice in support of the oppressed people and was sentenced to death in 1498, and boasts a cast that includes some of the finest Czech singers of the 1960s, including tenor Vilém Pribyl in the title role. Try by way of an example Act 3, Scene 3 ‘It’s the third night...Oh by what marvel, thou’ (Disc 2, Track 9). The conductor, one of the nation’s greatest at the time, is Jaroslav Krombholc. Kosler returns for Smetana’s fourth and perhaps greatest stage work, Libuše (1869-1872), a ‘festival’ opera in three acts concerning a figure in Czech historical myth who prophesied the founding of Prague. Libuše levels alongside Má vlast for patriotic fervour, a fact born out by the majestic overture and the opera’s close (‘Libuše’s Prophecy’) which quotes the Hussite hymn familiar from the last two movements of Má vlast and where Queen Libuše tells of future visions for the Czech nation.

Kosler’s live performance with Gabriela Beňačková marked the re-opening of the Prague National Theatre in November 1983 and has only one credible (incomplete) rival, the incomparable Marie Podvalová (Libuše) with the Prague National Theatre Chorus and under Václáv Talich (Supraphon SU 4279-2), recorded live in Prague on May 29th 1939 where, as I suggested in Gramophone in October 2020, Podvalová’s bold, fearless singing […] is like a knife in the heart. There’s also a studio recording of ‘Libuše’s Prophecy’ included in a 2-cd edition of Podvalová’s ‘Complete Recordings’ under Otakar Jeremiáš (SU 4307-2). But for much of the time Beňačková runs her pretty close. As to where to sample Kosler, I’d say the close of either the first or third acts (Disc 1, Track 10; Disc 3, Track 8).

The Two Widows (1873-1874, revised 1877), Smetana’s fifth completed opera, opens to a memorably urgent overture, which takes flight under the direction of František Jíleki in 1975. The plot concerns two very different widows, Karolina (Naďa Šormová), young and vibrant, and Anezka (Marcela Machotková) who shuts herself away. To hear both sopranos in charming and lively duet, head for Disc 2, Track 4, or for Anezka alone, two beautiful arias on tracks 11 and 12. Smetana worked next on The Kiss (1875-1876), where the peasant Lukas is widowed leaving him to woo his first love, the still eligible Vendulka. Again we’re given an eventful Overture (Brno Janáček Chorus and Orchestra, under František Vajnar in 1980) that reflects the world of the great tone poems and one of Smetana’s great arias, a lullaby that will melt your heart, ‘Are you, my baby, sleep now my angel’ (Eva Děpoltová Disc 1, Track 14), followed by a sunny vocal polka.

The Secret (1877-1878), Smetana’s last but one completed opera, is unusual in that the first number, after the Overture, uses woodblocks to imitate the work of threshers in a barn. Choruses, duets, arias and ensemble pieces reflecting real life call, in performance terms, on a number of fine Czech singers from the early 1980s, including the contralto Věra Soukupová. Try her scena ‘That is the fire of true love!’ on CD2, Track 3. Kosler again conducts. The same set also includes the surviving fragment from the uncompleted opera Viola after Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1874-1884) which is full of those disquieting harmonic twists that are so typical of ‘late’ Smetana. Kosler conducts both works.

Smetana’s last completed opera was The Devil’s Wall (1879-1882) which Zdeněk Chalabala – best known perhaps for his remarkable accounts of Dvořák’s late tone poems - recorded for Supraphon in 1960. The subtext of the opera’s plot is a Czech legend of a sheer rockface that overlooks the Vltava river, near the old monastery of Vyšši Brod, where the Devil was said to have halted the building of the monastery by damming the river, which then rose and flooded the site. A notable member of the cast is the Jewish Czech bass Boris Berman who, like his Czech-Jewish conducting colleague Karel Ančerl, spent time in the Nazi concentration camps Theresienstadt (Terezin) and Auschwitz. In 1944 he composed Suite Terezin in three movements, a work which musicologist Bret Web described as "a rare in situ tone portrait of life in a Nazi camp”. You can hear him as a hermit in duet with the devil (bass Ladislav Mráz), followed by the perky chorus “Come quietly and stealthily” (Disc 2, Tracks 13 and 14).

So, all in all, a magnificent achievement. Now, a request, please: Věra Řepková’s exceptional 1950s complete set of Smetana’s remarkable piano music. Years ago it was released by CPO in a set where Supraphon’s (mono) recordings were split across the left and right channels of each CD, the idea being to save space and money. But now we need something rather better, and Řepková’s exceptional performances would certainly justify the effort. So please Supraphon, in this Smetana year...or soon afterwards.