Ebook: A Critical Study of Antonín Dvořák's Vanda

Of Dvořák's eleven operas, Vanda has been one of the most overlooked and unjustly underrated. No one among the enthusiastic audience in attendance at its premiere, which took place In the Czech Provisional Theatre, Prague, on 17 April 1876, could have guessed that over the course of the next century this work would be performed only nineteen more times and be almost entirely forgotten. Even during Dvořák's lifetime the performance materials had fallen into terrible disarray. To make matters worse in this century, the autograph score was destroyed in a bombing raid during the Second World War. A diplomatic copy still exists, but it is fraught with mistakes. To date, only two short excerpts in piano-duet arrangements and the full score and parts for the new overture that Dvořák composed in 1879 for a revival of the opera have been published.

In the interest of ensuring that future performances will accord with the intentions of Dvořák and his librettists, all of the groundwork for a critical edition of the score is carefully laid in this study. The manuscript materials are sorted out and the trouble spots described in detail. Crucial sections of music, long since misplaced or overlooked, are reconstructed. Dvořák's various revisions are noted and, wherever possible, his reasons for making them are elucidated. A fully annotated edition of the libretto is included, along with an English translation. The stylistic features of both the text and the music are considered, and the cultural, sociopolitical, and economic conditions that fostered the opera’s creation are discussed.

This monograph on Vanda is the product of exhaustive archival research and reflects a meticulous scholarly approach, but it is not intended to serve the interests only of musicologists, historians, and linguists. Conductors, theater directors, vocalists, and Instrumentalists intent on staging this musically engaging and dramatically impressive opera likewise will find it valuable.