The Bartered Bride - Bedřich Smetana

The National Theatre

Premiere: 20 June 2008 were part of the festival Smetana's Litomyšl

Musical preparation: Ondrej Lenárd
Conductor: Ondrej Lenárd / David Švec
Director: Magdalena Švecová
Stage design: Petr Matásek
Costumes: Zuzana Přidalová
Chorus master: Pavel Vaněk
Choreography: Ladislava Košíková
Dramaturgy: Ondřej Hučín

Krušina: Ivan Kusnjer / Roman Janál
Ludmila: Yvona Škvárová / Jitka Soběhartová
Mařenka: Pavla Vykopalová / Dana Burešová / Alžběta Poláčková
Mícha: Miloslav Podskalský / Aleš Hendrych
Háta: Lenka Šmídová / Lucie Hilscherová / Jindřiška Rainerová
Vašek: Jaroslav Březina / Václav Lemberk / Aleš Voráček
Jeník: Aleš Briscein / Jaroslav Březina / Tomáš Černý / Tomáš Juhás
Kecal: Luděk Vele / Zdeněk Plech / Martin Gurbal'
Principal: Jan Ježek / Vladimír Doležal
Esmeralda: Kateřina Kněžíková / Lucie Fišer Silkenová
Indian: František Zahradníček / Martin Matoušek

Orchestra and choir of the National Theatre Opera, Continuo Theatre members under the leading of the Artistic Director Pavel Štourač, dancers, members of the Kühn's Childrens Choir

The Bartered Bride, an evergreen of Czech theatre and one of the icons of Czech culture in general, has been staged at the National Theatre virtually continuously from the very beginning up to the present day. In recent years it has already become a tradition that each new artistic management of the opera has created their own production of The Bartered Bride in which they have embodied their own dramatic visions and ideas. Sometimes, we have highlighted in Smetana’s and Sabina’s eternal story from Czech village life replete with humorous as well as moving human types and situations its poetic qualities, at others its realistic harshness, while its grotesqueness and playfulness have also been accentuated. This time the National Theatre Opera invited for staging of The Bartered Bride the young director Magdaléna Švecová whose intelligent, femininely tender and thoughtful sensitivity and original dramatic vision serve to uncover covert or overlooked values in classical repertoire works. In the history of the National Theatre, she is the first woman to direct The Bartered Bride.

Orchestra and choir of the National Theatre Opera, Continuo Theatre members under the leading of the Artistic Director Pavel Šťourač, dancers, members of the Kühn's Childrens Choir www.kuhnata.cz

The opera is staged in the Czech original version and English and German subtitles are used in the performance.

Duration of the performance: 3 hours