Speranza
Dvorak’s fascination with
opera continued to increase in the first half of the 1870s.
Without even waiting
to see how the premiere of King and Collier had fared – its first version having
been criticised to the extreme – he immediately set to work on a new opera, this
time a one-act comic opera set to a libretto by Josef Stolba, The Stubborn
Lovers. Despite the short interval separating these two works, the latter
testifies to a greater originality of expression and command of form. The
quality of the text chosen for the setting had much to do with this shift. While
this libretto could likewise hardly be described as particularly literary or
dramatic, it had, for its time, a witty plot (now rather naive from a modern
perspective) with a clear punch line and well drawn characters. Librettist Josef
Stolba, a notary by profession who also turned out plays and travel books, wrote
the text specially for Dvorak. The opera score appeared within a relatively
short space of time, between 4 October and 24 December 1874, with the overture
following soon afterwards.
The story, in
spirit, clearly indulged the universal popularity of Smetana’s The Bartered
Bride. It is set in a rural environment and tells the tale of a stubborn pair of
lovers, Tonik and Lenka, who are finally coaxed into marriage after being duped
by their scheming godfather Rericha. Dvorak’s music is sprightly, full of
melodic and rhythmical ideas, and the overall conception of the opera is rooted
in French and Italian comic opera, and also finds inspiration in Smetana’s stage
works. The plot is divided into sixteen semi-independent scenes, of which four
are written purely for soloists, three are choruses, and the other scenes are
dialogues involving two or three characters; the orchestral overture
traditionally comprises a slow introduction and a main fast movement. Seen in
the context of Dvorak’s entire dramatic oeuvre, The Stubborn Lovers is one of
the few exceptions where neither the composer nor anyone else interfered with
the original version of the score.
As soon as Dvorak finished his opera, he submitted
it for production. This was January 1875, but it was almost seven years before
the composer saw his work performed on stage. It is not entirely clear why the
opera was delayed for so long; according to the composer’s biographer, Otakar
Sourek, apparently “at that time, one-act operas were not popular among theatre
administration’s decision-makers.” Whatever the reason, the time that elapsed
between Dvorak’s submission of the opera for rehearsal and its premiere was the
longest period in the history of the composer’s stage works (if we don’t count
the first version of King and Collier, which wasn’t performed at all during
Dvorak’s lifetime). It’s no surprise, then, that he responded to a request which
came from Vienna at the beginning of 1881: the director of the Hofoper, Franz
Jauner, expressed an interest in producing one of Dvorak’s stage works.
Negotiations on staging The Stubborn Lovers at the Vienna theatre gradually
began to take shape and a contract was even drawn up in the summer; for reasons
unknown, however, the opera was never performed.
The
first performance of GLI AMANTI TESTARDI finally took place on 2 October 1881 at
the New Czech Theatre in Prague (the Provisional Theatre’s summer venue), thus,
paradoxically, after the staging of Dvorak’s later operas Vanda and The Cunning
Peasant. Critics at the time wrote that the premiere was “superb in every
respect: the overture alone enchanted the audience, which expressed its sincere
appreciation and continued to do so after almost every major scene. The composer
was called up to take a bow before his delighted audience several times.” The
very next day, Dvorak described the events in a letter to librettist Josef
Stolba:
“Allow me for the time being to give you a brief report of the huge
success of yesterday’s premiere of “The Stubborn Lovers”. The audience was
decidedly animated and several scenes were greeted with a round of applause,
particularly the one where the chorus appears for the first time, they were so
enthusiastic about that. If you can, or if you will, please write me a two- or
three-act comic opera soon, perhaps a historical situation set elsewhere, and
you will see that our collaboration will find its due acknowledgement in musical
circles.”
However, there was no more collaboration between Dvorak and Josef
Stolba; the latter’s fees were not satisfactory and the librettist lost
interest. Nevertheless, the success of the premiere encouraged Dvorak to write
another work for the stage, so much so that he immediately requested a libretto
for a comic opera from Marie Cervinkova-Riegrova. Their alliance later gave rise
to the operas Dimitrij and The Jacobin.
GLI AMANTI TESTARDI joins the second setting of King and Collier and
The Cunning Peasant as three operas which, at the time of writing, were welcomed
as a testimony of Dvorak’s move away from his former Neo-Romantic (in other
words, “German” or “foreign”) tendencies towards a “folksy” style. These were
undertakings which followed the canonical example of The Bartered Bride, which
was considered by many – a quite dogmatic opinion from today’s perspective – as
the only possible path a Czech opera composer could take. Yet one could not
describe The Stubborn Lovers, or the other two aforementioned works, as operas
created “in the Smetana mould”. Dvorak’s original musical idiom is clearly in
evidence here; the chief similarities primarily concern the rural theme and a
clear-cut musical setting unhindered by “scholarship”. If a contemporary theatre
were considering a production of Dvorak’s fourth stage opus, however, these
qualities, appreciated during their time, would, in fact, be more of an obstacle
today. Modern (opera or drama) theatre – with its predilection for Freudian or
Kafkaesque interpretations, and with its tendency to psychologise or perceive
issues from gender positions – is hardly a suitable environment for naive
stories about simple folk.
GLI AMANTI TESTARDI is part of a group of Dvorak’s operas which never made it to foreign
stage venues. The opera was variously staged at Prague’s National Theatre, with
longer or shorter breaks up until the year 1946; after this it never appeared on
the repertoire of this principal Czech theatre again. Theatres outside Prague
have performed the opera sporadically: Ostrava (1945), Opava (1946), Jihlava
(1951), Ceske Budejovice (1951), Janacek Academy of Music, Brno (1969, 1994),
and Liberec (1974). A production of the opera was made for television in
1990.
the story is set in a Czech village during the
1770s
Widower Vavra and widow Rihova come to an agreement that their
children, Tonik and Lenka, will marry one another. They think that things will
go smoothly, but old godfather Rericha warns them that the young pair are
stubborn and won’t put up with anyone interfering with the way they live their
lives. So he thinks up a cunning plan: He tells Tonik that his father wants to
marry Lenka, and then Lenka receives similar news about her mother; she
apparently wants to marry Tonik. At this point, the young couple start to wonder
whether they have made a mistake by rejecting one another out of pure
stubbornness. So they decide to get married.
REFERENCES:
(c)
http://www.antonin-dvorak.cz/en/stubborn-lovers
Sunday, February 2, 2014
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