|
Thursday night, February 11, I attended a concert given by the Lamont Symphony Orchestra in Gates Hall. It was truly an outstanding program, comprised not only of concert favorites, but also a double percussion concerto by the Israeli composer, Avner Dorman, performed by John Kinszie and Steve Hearn.
The concert opened with the Overture to “The Bartered Bride,” by Bedrich Smetana. The Bartered Bride was by far Smetana’s most popular opera, and during his life it received 117 performances, which is quite something, when you consider that he was constantly being compared to Wagner and Liszt. Smetana was a very strong-willed individual in spite of the fact that he was physically frail. When one of his operas (Dalibor) was criticized for being too Wagnerian, he countered by writing another opera, Libuse, which was quite obviously based on Wagnerian concepts. But The Bartered Bride was a success beyond his wildest dreams, and, along with his other operas, he is responsible for creating a repertoire in Czech music literature where none had previously existed.
|