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The Operas and Melodramas of Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1982

Jan Smaczny
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Extract

In a monograph entitled Zdenko Fibich published within a year of the composer's death, the musicologist Zdeněk Nejedlý asked the following question: ‘And who was more versatile than Fibich?’ The answer as far as Nejedlý was concerned was: ‘No one in the whole of the nineteenth century.’ Many of Fibich's contemporaries were quite certain that he occupied a position equal to his more internationally successful colleague Antonín Dvořák. Evidence of his contemporary standing is abundant, and his position in the firmament of Czech composers was characteristically summed up by William Ritter in 1896 when he described Fibich as the ‘Son’ in the ‘Holy Trinity’ of Czech music, in which Smetana was, naturally enough, the ‘Father’ and Dvořák the ‘Holy Spirit’. In an obituary article the critic Emanuel Chvála had no hesitation in putting Fibich next to Dvořák as ‘… the most eminent of our contemporary composers’. Nejedlý's assertion concerning Fibich's versatility is not entirely unworthy of examination. He contributed to many genres and expanded the scope of his theatrical activities with his cultivation of scenic melodrama. As a composer of opera Fibich stood aside from his Czech contemporaries in his deliberate avoidance of folk-orientated material and his compulsive interest in theatrical experiment. His intellectual demeanour led to collaborations with the finest Czech librettists of the time, and a close identification with the views of the aesthetician Otakar Hostinský (1847–1910). Believing strongly in the role of experiment in art, 4 and with a firm commitment to the principles of Wagnerian music drama, Hostinský was an ideal partner for the composer in the opera The Bride of Messina, the work which set the seal upon Fibich's position as an innovative force in Czech musical theatre.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 109 , 1982 , pp. 119 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Zdeněk Nejedlý, Zdenko Fibich, zakladatel scénického melodrama [Zdenko Fibich, the Founder of Scenic Melodrama] (Prague, 1901), 21.Google Scholar

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6 Compiled from: V. A. J. Hornové, Čaká zpěvohra [Czech Opera] (Prague, 1903); Jan Němeček, Národní Divadlo v období Karla Kovařovice [The National Theatre in the Time of Karel Kovařovic] (Prague, 1968); The author's own list of repertoire in the Provisional and National Theatres.Google Scholar

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