We'll stick with Smetana and head to a concert in Geneva, Switzerland to hear the Orchestra of the Swiss Romande and conductor Pinchas Steinberg with the "Polka" from Smetana's "The Bartered Bride." ...

These days, more performances of music from Bedrich Smetana's opera The Bartered Bride come from the concert stage than from the opera pit. The opera is nearly defunct, but these dances have survived.

The Czechiest features of The Bartered Bride – cornerstone of Czech opera and the first to go international after premiering in 1866 – are in the music rather than the story or setting. No accident: ...

Eric Crozier Joan Cross Bed?ich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, the founding work of modern Czech opera, soon exceeded the domestic framework and became a permanent part of the world’s operatic ...

So do we exchange jolly peasants for glowering apparatchiks? Hardly – this is as entertaining a version of Smetana’s opera as you could wish, but the celebration of Czech nationalism has extra edge ...

Musically, Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride is marvellous, vivid, dance-infused work. In the second performance of the run, conductor Jac van Steen and the Philharmonia Orchestra were achieving ...