Conductor, JULIUS HARRISON
ISOBEL BAILLIE (soprano)
Relayed from
The White Rock Pavilion, Hastings
The Countess in Mozart's opera Figaro has grave doubts of her husband's fidelity, and schemes with her maid, Suzanna, to find him out by a little plot of disguises and changed costumes. In the recitative before this aria she gives vent to her doubts of the propriety of such a scheme, and then in the aria laments the happy days when she was sure that his devotion was wholly her own.
There are dances in each of the three acts of The Bartered Bride. The Dance of the Comedians is taken from the last act, that in which the circus troupe appears. The tunes employed are Bohemian in origin or in construction, and reflect the true surroundings of the country the opera is about. Smetana was above all a nationalist composer, a keen student of Czech and Bohemian
.folk-song, and The Bartered Bride is thoroughly native in tone and idiom. The music of the dances is authentic, and belongs essentially to the Bohemia of the nineteenth century.