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 ...

We haven't seen a lot of Smetana's The Bartered Bride in the UK recently. Bohemia's best-loved opera is rapidly becoming one of the repertoire's best-kept secrets, which is a shame because it's an ...

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 ...

So it was a joy to see a carefully reduced BBC Symphony Orchestra at the heart of things, hypersensitive to doyen Jiří Bělohlávek's canny interchange of village band and Wagnerian sounds. There were ...

Just before the curtain rises on the set of a mid-19th Century bucolic Bohemian village, Brian DeMaris's superb student orchestra leaps into the festive and celebratory overture to Bed?ich Smetana 's ...

The Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra Of New York. side 1: The Bartered Bride: Overture (beginning); side 2: The Bartered Bride: Overture (conclusion) (Columbia 19003-D). North, James N.. New York ...

It’s a sure sign of disaster when the loudest cheer during an opera comes in response to a circus divertissement. Sadly, this was the case in this, the Royal Opera’s second revival of Francesca ...

“My music is rhythmic because I am Czech… the natural music of the Czechs is rhythm – strong and agile rhythm.” (Martinů). How well the conductor Jac van Steen and the director Paul Curran understood ...