According to the author, the Libuše opera should only be performed on rare occasions. The year of the bicentenary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana is undoubtedly the right moment for its concert launch. The JPO will perform it under the direction of the music director of the Prague National Theater Robert Jindra.

Bedřich Smetana
Libuše, JB 1:102, concert performance of the opera in 3 acts to a libretto by Josef Wenzig

Mária Porubčinová –  Libuše, Queen
Svatopluk Sem –  Přemysl, farmer from Stadice
Martin Bárta – Chrudoš from Otava
Richard Samek –  Šťáhlav na Radbuze
Pavel Švingr –  Lutobor from Dobroslavský Chlumec
Jiří Hájek –  Radovan from Kamenný most
Petra Alvarez Šimková –  Krasava
Monika Jägerová – Radmila
Prague Philharmonic Choir
Lukáš Vasilek – choirmaster
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Robert Jindra – conductor

In the year of the two hundredth anniversary of the composer’s birth, a concert performance of Smetana’s opera Libuše will complement the Smetana Opera Cycle Ostrava 2024 of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. On this occasion, it was decided to study and perform all of Smetana’s operas together.

The opera Libuše was written between 1871 and 1872 during the struggle for the cultural and political identity of the Czech nation. Smetana gave the mythical legend of Princess Libuše, which we know from the Chronicle of Kosmas or the literary elaboration of the Zelenohorské Manuscript, the form of a vast historical painting. The inspiration of Richard Wagner’s mythological operas is quite evident here. Smetana’s opera closes with Libuše’s magnificent prophecy about the future of the Czech nation, which ends with the words “the Czech nation will not end, it will gloriously overcome the horrors of hell”.

Libuše was first performed in 1881 at the opening of the National Theatre and the composer expressed his wish that the work should be performed only exceptionally, on particularly memorable days of the Czech nation. The days associated with the anniversaries of Smetana’s birth and death are undoubtedly one of them, and Libuše will be performed under the baton of Robert Jindra, Music Director of the National Theatre in Prague.