Prague State Opera
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Prague State Opera (Czech: Státní opera Praha), is an opera and ballet company in Prague, Czech Republic, and is one of the most important companies in the Europe. Until 1945 it was named the New German Theatre where great musicians of the world music history as Gustav Mahler, Alexander Zemlinsky, Georg Széll, Richard Strauss, Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, Lilli Lehmann, Maria Jeritza, Leo Slezak and others performed.
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[edit] The opera house history 1888–2006
The history of the Theatre building that has born the name Prague State Opera since 1 April 1992, and whose past has always stood in the shadow of the National Theatre (unjustly, though on the whole understandably in the Czech capital) began to be written in the second half of the nineteenth century. At that time the Czech lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and there was a large German minority living in Prague. The birth of a magnificent Czech Theatre – National Theatre – in the year 1883 indirectly created a longing among the Prague German community, too, for a great theatre. On 4 February 1883 the Deutscher Theatreverein was founded with the initial goal of raising funds. The plans were elaborated by the well-established Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer, this time in co-operation with Karl Hasenauer, the architect who designed Vienna’s Burgtheater. The implementation of the project was entrusted to Prague architect Alfons Wertmüller who accomplished his task with flying colours within the span of the next twenty months and handed over the building to the commissioners in a fully operational condition. Thanks to its spacious auditorium and the rich neo-rococo décor Neues deutsches Theatre (New German Theatre) belongs to the most beautiful opera houses in Europe.
[edit] First performance
Performances commenced on 5 January 1888 with Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The first director became Angelo Neumann, who brought there distinguished musicians and set high artistic standards so that the Theatre reached soon international recognition. Neumann's successors were Heinrich Teweles, Leopold Kramer, Robert Volkner, and Paul Eger. In the 1930s, with the growing Nazi threat, the New German Theatre in Prague was among the bastions of democracy, serving as a refuge for artists from Germany. Political developments shortly before signature of the Munich Agreement along with the financial problems led the German Theatre Association to close the Theatre in September 1938. Thus the stage on which had appeared such celebrities as Alexander Zemlinsky, Georg Széll, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer, Hans Hotter, Kurt Baum, and of guests for example Nellie Melba, Enrico Caruso, Emma Calvé, Lilli Lehmann, Selma Kurz, Maria Jeritza, and Leo Slezak to name just a few, ended ingloriously the first era of its existence.
[edit] Czechoslovak state interest in the building
The Czechoslovak state expressed an interest in the building. But the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 and establishment of the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" thwarted its plans. Under the new title Deutsches Opernhaus (German Opera House), the Theatre served for political assemblies of the Nazi Party, and for the occasional guest presentations by ensembles from the Reich. A radical change came in May 1945. A group of Czech artists headed by Alois Hába, Václav Kašlík, and Antonín Kurš founded there the Theatre of the Fifth of May. The first opera performance was of Bedřich Smetana's Brandenburgers in Bohemia on 4 September 1945. The artistic agenda of the new ensemble strove to create an avant-garde Theatre that would serve as an antipode to the more conservatively-oriented National Theatre. Concrete results were not long in coming: after the opening of Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann on 29 August 1946 came a strikingly-different form of the previously-untouchable Bedřich Smetana's The Bartered Bride, then Alois Hába's quarter-tone opera Mother, Sergei Prokofiev's Betrothal in a Monastery, etc. These productions aroused attention on the part of the public and media including acclaim from abroad, and the Grand Opera of the Fifth of May began to create unwanted competition for the National Theatre. Starting with the 1948-49 season by government decree the Grand Opera was incorporated into the National Theatre. Thus the second significant period of the Theatre ended once more ingloriously.
[edit] Building renamed
In November 1949, the building was renamed the Smetana Theatre. Given the stage facilities, it was suitable for large-scale works from the worldwide operatic repertoire. Ballet was given a prominent place. Opera productions mounted at the Smetana Theatre could moreover enlist the services of all soloists, conductors and directors. However, the organizational division of the productions often gave rise to immense operational difficulties.
The repertoire provided for productions of Czech contemporary operas, but the works of Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček were not neglected. However, the standard repertoire was formed out of the major and minor works from the world's operatic literature and quite a few productions met with international acclaim.
However, due to its large-capacity stage facilities, the Smetana Theatre was primarily used by international opera, ballet and drama companies invited to Prague for guest performances. Thanks to the width of scope and diversity of the repertoire, the Smetana Theatre has seen appearances by star singers from abroad giving guest performances in Prague. The culmination was a series of six performance by the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow (May 23–28, 1973) and a visit by the Vienna State Opera with two performances of Richard Strauss´s Ariadne auf Naxos conducted by Karl Böhm and with Edita Gruberova as Zerbinetta (25 and 27 April,1979).
[edit] Regained independence
After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, efforts to regain independence for the Smetana Theatre were crowned with success and on 1 April the Prague State Opera was established there. Karel Drgáč became its first director. He enlarged the repertoire by further key works of the world opera literature. What earned him an unambiguous critical praise, though, was most notably his systematic cultivation of the legacy of 20th century production (Alexander Zemlinsky, Hans Krása, Gottfried von Einem). The new style of work, and the much-stressed orientation toward the traditions of the New German Theatre were not always well-received. Thus Drgáč had to fight a series of battles to win the war for the State Opera's existence. And meanwhile he lost his own battle, when upon expiration of his three-year term the mezzo-soprano Eva Randová emerged victorious from the competition held in 1995 for the post of director. However, not even a singer who had experience in the most prestigious Theatres of the world could avoid later criticism of her manner of managing the Theatre. Her successor, Daniel Dvořák, in many ways continued in the trend of Karel Drgáč. He understood the Prague State Opera as a Theatre that needed to be incorporated into the European context, and opera as a genre whose development needed to be helped through support of new works. During his four seasons (1998–2002) Prague had the opportunity to experience an unprecedented number of world premieres.
[edit] Post Dvorak events
After Dvořák left his post to take over as the Director of the National Theatre in Prague, the Minister of Culture appointed to the head of the State Opera Prague Mgr Jaroslav Vocelka, until then its Managing Director, whose detailed knowledge of the structure and administration of a major opera house, coupled with considerable managerial skills, vouchsafed the company's smooth transition to the next period. The Prague State Opera carries on its policy of progressive programming. Scott Joplin´s Treemonisha, La bohème of Ruggero Leoncavallo, Eugen d´Albert´s Tiefland, or Leonard Bernstein´s Candide, all represented truly revelatory landmarks in the house's programme-building policy, as they ushered onto its stage works of lasting value, certain to stay on its repertoire through the coming seasons. In what represented another prudent step on the compound plane of the company's artistic goals and day-to-day operation, the opera's ballet corps merged with the famous Prague Chamber Ballet ensemble, to become the Prague State Opera Ballet (since January 1, 2003).
Jaroslav Vocelka has also linked up with his predecessors´ practice of staging concerts for the benefit of a wide variety of charitable and humanitarian ends. In addition to that, he has opened the theatre's doors to several important cultural and social events. An important part of the Prague State Opera's operational structure is its Documentation Centre. Apart from keeping systematic archival records of the theatre's activities, it has focused a good deal of effort on the reconstruction of the lost archives of the New German Theatre. In summer 2004, the Prague State Opera published, in association with Slovart publishing company – as the PSO's contribution to the Czech Republic's joining of the European Union – a representative volume entitled The Prague State Opera: A History of the Theatre in Pictures and Dates. The book, with texts in Czech, English and German, is a unique compendium documenting the history of this opera house through the course of history, from the New German Theatre to the present day. Moreover, drawing material from a wide array of sources, both domestic and international, the publication grouped together an invaluable literary and photographic archive, including a number of documents which were published for the first time there.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Tomáš Vrbka: Státní opera Praha. Historie divadla v obrazech a datech 1888-2003 / The Prague State Opera – Theatre History in Pictures and Dates 1888-2003 Slovart, Praha 2004, ISBN 80-239-2831-7 [1]
[edit] External links
