Except for the Met’s problematic campaign to promote 21st-century opera, the repertoire presented by U.S. companies has lately contracted to the most familiar works, especially those by Mozart, Verdi and Puccini. However, the biannual Boston Early Music Festival continues to mount baroque novelties, while every summer Bard SummerScape lavishes considerable resources on a pair of works rarely if ever seen on this side of the Atlantic.
As a companion to its Martinů and His World festival, Bard last month presented the U.S. stage premiere of Bedřich Smetana’s historical melodrama Dalibor—as always conducted by university president Leon Botstein, who had in June turned his unstoppable curiosity toward Richard Strauss’s first opera Guntram at Carnegie Hall.
Sometimes dubbed “the Father of Czech Music,” Smetana is best known for his delightful comic opera Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride) as well as the symphonic poem Má vlast (My Fatherland). He came to opera relatively late; his first, Braniboři v Čechách (The Brandenburgers in Bohemia), premiered when the composer was in his early 40s, with Bride and Dalibor following in quick succession.
While many of his nine remain cornerstones of the Czech Republic’s opera repertoire—I saw a performance of Brandenburgers at Prague’s Národní Divadlo in 1998—they are infrequently revived outside that country. This season, the Vienna State Opera will be mounting a new production of Bride (in German, of course), but it hasn’t been performed at the Met since 1996. Juilliard and the Met did collaborate on Stephen Wadworth’s new Bride conducted by James Levine in 2011, with an eye toward it moving across 65th Street to the Met, but that transfer never materialized.
Before Bard revived it this summer, Dalibor had last been heard nearly 50 years ago at Carnegie Hall with Nicolai Gedda in the title role. That 1977 concert version by the Opera Orchestra of New York led by Eve Queler was followed up almost a decade later by the same organization’s Libuše. I attended that performance of Smetana’s grandly ponderous “festival opera,” which proved singularly memorable for Gabriela Beňačková’s majestically radiant portrayal of the title role.
Like both Brandenburgers and Libuše, Dalibor offers some inspired music in service of oddly uninvolving librettos. Josef Wenzig originally wrote the text in German, which was then translated into Czech by Ervín Špindler, and it features one of the more puzzling heroes of 19th-century opera.
Dalibor, a rebel knight, has been imprisoned for a recent raid on Ploskovice during which he killed its ruling Count. The opening chorus ramps up Dalibor’s curious heroic reputation by acknowledging his guilt while forgiving his murderous act. When Dalibor appears, he ignores the roiling political upheaval caused by his actions and instead muses plaintively on his all-consuming love for his slain male friend Zdeněk, a talented violinist. During an earlier skirmish, Zdeněk was killed by the Count, his decapitated head displayed on a spear’s point. Dalibor’s fury propels a bloody revenge for which he remains proudly unrepentant as King Vladislav condemns him. While imprisoned in the deepest dungeon, Dalibor dreams of Zdeněk who, embodied by actor Patrick Andrews, haunts Jean-Romain Vesperini’s modestly effective staging throughout, both in person and in Etienne Guiol’s looming projections.
During his trial, Dalibor is vehemently denounced by Milada, the Count’s bereaved sister; however—in one of those quintessential “only in opera” reversals—she immediately falls in love with him upon encountering him in court. She then hatches a scheme in which she will disguise herself as a boy in order to enter the prison and facilitate his escape. Once she is taken on as helper, Beneš, the benevolent jailer who is also won over by Dalibor, unearths an old violin for Milada to give to his prisoner so he can while away the lonely hours conjuring Zdeněk. After Milada descends into his cell, she reveals her true identity and declares her love, which is—you guessed it—instantaneously reciprocated during their strangely passionless duet.
Dalibor, who previously longed to join Zdeněk in death, joyously embraces the prospect of life with Milada. He takes up the old violin to celebrate when a string snaps: is that a bad sign, he wonders? Most definitely—Milada is soon mortally wounded leading a failed escape and dies in Dalibor’s arms. This turn of events has Dalibor once again wishing for death, a now even more appealing prospect as he imagines a heavenly three-way with Zdeněk and Milada. In Vesperini’s striking final tableau, Dalibor eagerly offered himself up to Budivoj’s raised sword.
While Libuše builds memorably to its heroine’s spellbinding prophecy, Dalibor ultimately goes nowhere. The central character’s “heroism” is questionable at best, his fate predetermined. Smetana’s opera is sometimes referred to as the “Czech Fidelio,” a misleading comparison as Milada’s prison disguise doesn’t lead to the liberation of Dalibor who, unlike Beethoven’s Florestan, is justly imprisoned. No redeeming last-minute rescue for anyone!
Dalibor did, however, give Botstein and his large forces ample opportunities to shine. James Bagwell’s always eager Bard Festival Chorus reliably excelled in several rabble-rousing scenes. As Jitka, Dalibor’s adopted daughter who joins with Milada in escape planning, Erica Petrocelli turned a minor role into a major one with a boldly clarion soprano that gleamed as it rose. At the beginning of the second act, she joined lyric tenor Terrence Chin-Loy’s ardent Vitek in an exciting conspiratorial duet that made one regret that the pair had so little to do during the remainder of the opera.
Bass-baritone Alfred Walker urgently conveyed King Vladislav’s indecision over agreeing to the people’s cry for Dalibor’s freedom or rightly condemning the guilty man. Vesperini’s frequent placement of Vladislav at the top of Bruno de Lavenère’s striking central chainmail-covered spiral staircase allowed Walker’s easy authority to dominate his scenes. As the jailer Beneš, Wei Wu’s deep bass resounded during his scenes, including an unnecessarily lengthy vignette in which he complains about Milada’s deception.
Botstein had originally cast Polish soprano Izabela Matula and Czech tenor Ladislav Elgr as Milada and Dalibor, but both artists ran into insurmountable visa difficulties. Without much time to recast these unusual and demanding Czech roles, Botstein nonetheless succeeded admirably. Cadie J Bryan, who had initially been hired to cover, took over Milada and threw herself into the opera’s most compelling character with a vivid physicality and vibrantly pulsing high notes. While she sometimes sounded like a lyric pushed to her limits rather than the spinto soprano needed, she passionately embraced Milada’s confusing actions with bold enthusiasm. If her surprising love duet with John Matthew Myers didn’t rise to hoped-for heights, blame Smetana, not its performers.
Myers, who sounded underpowered in Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder with Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra last year at Carnegie Hall, redeemed himself splendidly again with Botstein in the title role of Guntram. Stepping into Smetana’s title role, Myers once again made unusually challenging music sound easy with his tireless, yet sweetly plangent tenor. His rather introverted portrayal elicited more sympathy for the self-absorbed Dalibor than he may have deserved.
Botstein, his cast and the hard-working ASO made a best-case effort to rehabilitate Dalibor, but I fear that its rather static drama and less than inspiring score will keep it a curiosity unlikely to find much attention outside of the Czech Republic. However, SummerScape will turn its attention on August 17 to Bohuslav Jan Martinů’s exotic Julieta with Petrocelli in the title role. It’s another chance to experience a fascinating work by an underrated composer that Botstein and the ASO memorably performed at Carnegie Hall in March 2019.
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