Leader, J. Mouland Begbie
Conductor, Guy Warrack
There is hardly a page of the whole score of Smetana's opera The Bartered Bride that is not unmistakably Czech in flavour. The polka is a dance of Czech origin-not Viennese, as people often imagine ; legend says that it was invented by a Czech servant-girl, or evolved by her from some folk dance, about a hundred years ago. In Smetana's time, therefore, the dance was still comparatively modern. (The Bartered Bride was produced in 1866.) The other two dances are equally characteristic and colourful-the ' furiant ' being as lively as its name implies.