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 ...

And it has an anti-hero in the person of a youth with a stammer, who gets laughed at and ends up as a circus bear. The fact that the proposed sale is a trick to enable a genuine love match is the sort ...

So do we exchange jolly peasants for glowering apparatchiks? Hardly – this is as entertaining a version of Smetana’s opera as you could wish, but the celebration of Czech nationalism has extra edge ...

Opera can sometimes sneak up on you. Granted, that’s an odd thing to say about an art form best known for high-decibel emoting. But longtime fans know it’s true. “A lot of the best operas take the ...

The School of Music's Lyric Opera Theatre is putting on a production of Bedřich Smetana’s "The Bartered Bride" on Sept. 27, 28, 30 and on Oct. 1. Dale Dreyfoos, professor of opera and music theater ...

“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 ...