Smetana and the librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who expected the "national opera" to be an idyllic picture of the Czech countryside, with its inhabitants being virtuous and ...

There is much to admire in Daniel Slater's The Bartered Bride, updating Smetana's 19th-century peasant marriage market to edgier times, a century on during the Prague Spring. The opening chorus, ...

And it has an anti-hero in the person of a youth with a stammer, who gets laughed at and ends up as a circus bear. The fact that the proposed sale is a trick to enable a genuine love match is the sort ...

Musically, Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride is marvellous, vivid, dance-infused work. In the second performance of the run, conductor Jac van Steen and the Philharmonia Orchestra were achieving ...

Unlock access to every one of the hundreds of articles published daily on BroadwayWorld by logging in with one click. Smetana and the librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who expected ...

So do we exchange jolly peasants for glowering apparatchiks? Hardly – this is as entertaining a version of Smetana’s opera as you could wish, but the celebration of Czech nationalism has extra edge ...

The opening production of Garsington Opera’s 30th-anniversary season finds the festival at the top of its game. The Philharmonia – one of the world’s leading orchestras – is in the pit, with conductor ...

The circus in Act III is a spectacular piece of anti-regime protest. Next week's staging of Smetana's 1866 opera The Bartered Bride updates it to 1972, adds a circus and tosses in plenty of humour.

Bedrich Smetana deals with love In his earthy opera "The Bartered Bride." It may not be politically correct — the bride is bought, after all — but everything turns out happily in the end. Here's an ...

Garsington favourite that transfers Smetana’s Czech comedy to a 1960s English setting delights again The hit of Garsington’s 2019 season, Bedřich Smetana’s village comedy returns with revival director ...

'The Bartered Bride'A young woman's love ultimately triumphs over her parents, her circumstances, and a wacky matchmaker. This is the Overture to the Bartered Bride by Bedrich Smetana, from a concert ...