Leader, Philip Whiteway
Conductor, E. Godfrey Brown
James Johnston (tenor)
Mozart's opera Don Giovanni was first performed at Prague on October 29, 1787. The overture, a fine and dramatic piece of music, sums up the atmosphere of the whole opera. The opening sombre andante is based on the music that accompanies the apparition of ' The Stone Guest', while the succeeding allegro depicts Don Giovanni 's love of enjoyment.
The Bartered Bride was the second of Smetana's operas. He wrote six others later, but none of them has won anything like the success of this one. But The Bartered Bride sets a very high standard. It is one of the most delicious comic operas ever written, full not only of lovely sparkling melody but of dramatic life and colour. Not the least delightful feature is its tang of Czech nationalism. There is hardly a page of the whole score that is not unmistakably Czech in flavour. The ' polka ' is, of course, 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.