Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Notes to the Reader
- List of Abbreviations
- Timeline of Modern Czech History
- 1 Introduction: Nationalism, Modernism, and the Social Responsibility of Art in Prague
- 2 Smetana, Hostinský, and the Aesthetic Debates of the Nineteenth Century
- 3 Legacies, Ideologies, and Responsibilities: The Polemics of the Pre-Independence Years (1900–1918)
- 4 “Archetypes Who Live, Rejoice, and Suffer”: Czech Opera in the Fin de Siècle
- 5 The Pathology of the New Society: Debates in the Early Years of the First Republic (1918–24)
- 6 Infinite Melody, Ruthless Polyphony: Czech Modernism in the Early Republic
- 7 “A Crisis of Modern Music or Audience?”: Changing Attitudes to Cultural and Stylistic Pluralism (1925–30)
- 8 “I Have Rent My Soul in Two”: Divergent Directions for Czech Opera in the Late 1920s
- 9 Heaven on Earth: Socialism, Jazz, and a New Aesthetic Focus (1930–38)
- 10 “A Sad Optimism, the Happiness of the Resigned”: Extremes of Operatic Expression in the 1930s
- 11 The Ideological Debates of Prague Within a European Context
- Appendix One Personalia
- Appendix Two Premieres and New Productions at the National Theater, 1900–1938
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - “I Have Rent My Soul in Two”: Divergent Directions for Czech Opera in the Late 1920s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Notes to the Reader
- List of Abbreviations
- Timeline of Modern Czech History
- 1 Introduction: Nationalism, Modernism, and the Social Responsibility of Art in Prague
- 2 Smetana, Hostinský, and the Aesthetic Debates of the Nineteenth Century
- 3 Legacies, Ideologies, and Responsibilities: The Polemics of the Pre-Independence Years (1900–1918)
- 4 “Archetypes Who Live, Rejoice, and Suffer”: Czech Opera in the Fin de Siècle
- 5 The Pathology of the New Society: Debates in the Early Years of the First Republic (1918–24)
- 6 Infinite Melody, Ruthless Polyphony: Czech Modernism in the Early Republic
- 7 “A Crisis of Modern Music or Audience?”: Changing Attitudes to Cultural and Stylistic Pluralism (1925–30)
- 8 “I Have Rent My Soul in Two”: Divergent Directions for Czech Opera in the Late 1920s
- 9 Heaven on Earth: Socialism, Jazz, and a New Aesthetic Focus (1930–38)
- 10 “A Sad Optimism, the Happiness of the Resigned”: Extremes of Operatic Expression in the 1930s
- 11 The Ideological Debates of Prague Within a European Context
- Appendix One Personalia
- Appendix Two Premieres and New Productions at the National Theater, 1900–1938
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The long shadows of the “Wozzeck Affair” extended over many endeavors of the Prague compositional community and its increasingly tense relations with the public in the late 1920s. As discussed in chapter 7, for several years after the November 1926 fiasco at the National Theater, all administrative decisions—largely conservative in the extreme—were made with Wozzeck in mind as a high-water mark of public reaction against modernism, never to be repeated. The reception of new works after this point, however, reflected something less tangible than box-office receipts. Almost invariably, operas of the late 1920s were afforded a new monolithic, iconic status, as though standing for something much greater than the musical and theatrical experience provided by an evening's entertainment at the National Theater. While the late operas of Janáček immediately achieved places in the national operatic canon, others, such as Švanda dudák and Bubu z Montparnassu, were vilified or blocked entirely. In between these two relatively extreme ends of the continuum, less contentious works were also treated as sole representatives of various aesthetic directions, each with the potential to resolve the crisis provoked by Wozzeck.
In many respects this legacy is echoed in the artistic choices of composers finally forced to reconcile their modernist styles with the expectations of a powerful paying public, and to resolve this dilemma in concrete, musico-dramatic terms. Operas premiered in the early 1920s, as we have seen in chapter 6, had dealt in musical and dramatic abstractions.
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- Information
- Opera and Ideology in PraguePolemics and Practice at the National Theater, 1900–1938, pp. 223 - 259Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006