Operní adaptace Babičky Boženy Němcové
Operatic Adaptations of Božena Němcová’s Babička

Summary/Abstract: Adaptations of prose works to the form of opera librettos are quite frequent, but the resulting operas are observed from a musical point of view much more often than from a literary and comparative one. This paper seeks to expand this area of research and consider some aspects that need to be included in further observations. The research is based on a comparison of two operatic adaptations of Babička by Božena Němcová. One of them is Babička by the librettist Adolf Wenig and the composer Antonín Vojtěch Horák, which was premiered in 1900 at the Prague National Theatre; the other is Na Starém bělidle by the librettist Karel Šípek and the composer Karel Kovařovic, presented at the same venue in 1901. Both are based on the same template, yet each of them processes this template in a different way and (according to contemporary criticism) otherwise successfully. Wenig tries to include as much content as possible from the original short story, while Šípek only selects certain images, which he then elaborates more consistently. This also influenced the fate of each opera—Kovařovic’s Na starém bělidle was played for another fifty years throughout Czechia and its quality was reflected many times in the period press, while Horák’s Babička received only several not very laudatory reviews and soon fell into oblivion. In addition to opinions of the time about operas and the methods of narrative transformation, the paper elaborates on the usage of folk songs in operas. The main research source in this area is the Prostonárodní písně a říkadla by Karel Jaromír Erben, which contains a large number of lyrics and melodies later used in the operas.

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