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První ředitel Národního divadla František Adolf Šubert (1849–1915), člověk mimořádně aktivní a zasloužilý hned v několika ohledech, dosud neměl žádnou vydanou monografii. Zpřístupněním zrevidovaného rukopisu z pera novináře, uměleckého kritika a literárního historika Antonína Veselého (1888–1945) o F. A. Šubrtovi jako dramatikovi splácíme část dluhu českého kulturního dějepisectví vůči této velké, zakladatelské a málem již polozapomenuté osobnosti. Autor a v jeho stopě editor publikace sledují Šubrta v celém vývoji jeho dramatické tvorby, v minulosti neprávem podceňované, od studentských počátků přes složité překonávání romantické estetiky a soudobých vlivů francouzských až po několik závažných pokusů o soudobé realistické drama, které plnily aktuální průkopnickou úlohu v české dramatické produkci. Jejich závažnost autor dokazuje přesvědčivě, na základě důkladného pramenného studia a v širším kulturním a politickém kontextu.
Grand palaces of culture, opera theaters marked the center of European cities like the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. As opera cast its spell, almost every European city and society aspired to have its own opera house, and dozens of new theaters were constructed in the course of the "long" nineteenth century. At the time of the French Revolution in 1789, only a few, mostly royal, opera theaters, existed in Europe. However, by the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nearly every large town possessed a theater in which operas were performed, especially in Central Europe, the region upon which this book concentrates. This volume, a revised and extended version of two well-reviewed bo...
Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and Music-Critical Discourse in Liberal Vienna offers a nuanced look at the intersection of music, cultural identity, and political ideology in late-nineteenth-century Vienna. Drawing on an extensive selection of writings in the city's political press, correspondence, archival documents, and a large body of recent scholarship in late Habsburg cultural and political history, author David Brodbeck argues that Vienna's music critics were important agents in the public sphere whose writings gave voice to distinct, sometimes competing ideological positions. These conflicting positions are exemplified especially well in their critical writi...
The motto Národ sobě – “From the Nation to Itself” – inscribed over the proscenium arch of Prague’s National Theatre symbolizes the importance theatre holds for the Czechs. During the National Awakening of the 19th century, theatre took the place of politics, becoming an instrument of national identity in the hands of the revivalists. In what was then part of a German-speaking empire, the Czechs devised a complex and evocative theatre language made up of allegory, allusion, juxtaposition, games, wordplay, legend, history, illusion and music. A sophisticated avant-garde theatre flowered in Czechoslovakia between the wars, and became a symbol of independence during the Nazi occupat...
As both an in-depth study of Mozart criticism and performance practice in Prague, and a history of how eighteenth-century opera was appropriated by later political movements and social groups, this book explores the reception of Mozart's operas in Prague between 1791 and the present and reveals the profound influence of politics on the construction of the Western musical canon. Tracing the links between performances of Mozart's operas and strategies that Bohemian musicians, critics, directors, musicologists, and politicians used to construct modern Czech and German identities, Nedbal explores the history of the canonization process from the perspective of a city that has often been regarded as peripheral to mainstream Western music history. Individual chapters focus on Czech and German adaptations of Mozart's operas for Prague's theaters, operatic criticism published in Prague's Czech and German journals, the work of Bohemian historians interpreting Mozart, and endeavours of cultural activists to construct monuments in recognition of the composer.
The chronological range covered by the individual essays is more than two hundred years, from the Classical Enlightenment to the early twenty-first century. Some of the studies encompassed by this volume undertake the analysis of one composer's settings of a particular poet's work - albeit with rather more critical rigour. Others trace the ways in which a literary text is modified and adapted before and as it develops as one of the principal components of an opera. Several share new insights into the complex relationships of individual works with the literary and musical traditions out of which they emerge (or which they transform and renew) - or set such works in the political contexts of t...
In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline—a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although the lands that were once the Kingdom of Bohemia lie at the heart of Europe, Czechs are usually encountered only in the margins of other people's stories. In The Coasts of Bohemia, Derek Sayer reverses this perspective. He presents a comprehensive and long-needed history of the Czech people that is also a remarkably original history of modern Europe, told from its uneasy center. Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Coun...
Opera is the grandest and most potent cultural expression of the nationalist movement which led to the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. During this period Czech opera developed into a genre of major artistic importance cultivated by composers of the stature of Smetana, Dvorák and Janácek. Czech Opera examines opera in its national contexts, and is a study not only of operas written in Czech, but also of the specific circumstances which shaped them. These include the historical and political background to the period, the theatres in which Czech plays and operas were first performed, and the composers and performers who worked in them. The role of the librettists is given particular prominence and is complemented by a detailed chapter on the subject matter of the librettos shedding light on the subject matter of the historical and mythic background of the genre.