Czech composer Bedrich Smetana wrote his opera The Bartered Bride during a happy and productive period of his life. It's probably good that he was happy while he was writing it; the opera failed to ...

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 ...

The Bartered Bride’s grotesque yet highly moving story is grasped with tenderness, intelligent wit and hyperbole, as well as an understanding for the long-gone order (disorder) of human lives in the ...

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 ...