Smetana zwischen Operette und Oper. Die Sänger des Theaters an der Wien 1893 und an der Hofoper 1896
Smetana between Operetta and Opera. Singers in the Theater an der Wien in 1893 and in the Court Opera in 1896

Summary/Abstract: The director of the Theater an der Wien Alexandrine von Schönerer and her art advisor Franz Jauner used the success of Smetana's Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride] on the occasion of the visit of the Czech National Theatre at the International Exhibition of Music and Theatre (Internationale Ausstellung für Musik- und Theaterwesen) in Vienna in 1892. They organized the Viennese premiere of this opera, which was also its first enactment in German, in April 1893. This operetta-focused theatre thus used Smetana's opera as a precursor to the intended change in the repertory composition directed towards the genre of comic and later also serious opera. With the same intention, the Theater an der Wien presented a comic one-act opera by Vilém Blodek V studni [In the Well] in the following year. Two Czech operas were thus intended to stand at the beginning of the dramaturgy representing higher ambitions in theatre management. Three years later, the premiere of Prodaná nevěsta in the Court Opera (Hofoper) took place. The study is dedicated to biographies of the artists who participated in both of the premieres in Theater an der Wien and the Court Opera, and provides a further context.

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