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Deliver Us from It Soon!

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A great piece of music can fall flat unless it has a worthy place for performances, as Bedrich Smetana wrote in a newspaper column of 1864:

“Boosters declare, ‘Thank God we have a provisional theater!’ But let’s pray to God to deliver us from it soon! How on earth can we present an opera in a house as small as ours? In Meyerbeer’s opera The Hugenots the armies add up to all of eight on a side, which makes the audience laugh.

“The singers are squashed together so tightly that everyone has to take care not to hurt his neighbor when he turns around. As for the chorus, they stand either in a straight line in the footlights or in a semicircle at the back of the stage, packed so closely that they have to sing their parts without moving their arms or legs for fear of injuring the next person over.

“The acoustics are very different from those in our larger houses, and once an artist has gotten used to a small stage area it takes many tiring hours and many mistakes before he adjusts to a larger one.

“Another terror is the orchestra pit–a space that’s hardly worthy of the name! Who in the world can hear the strings when there are hardly enough to make a chamber sound, let alone garden music! There are four first violins, four seconds, two violas, two cellos, and only one double bass! Never can we hear the musicians play as a group or in their proper proportions. The brass and winds drown out the strings completely!

“Under such conditions it’s hard to speak of higher artistic standards. If we’re going to develop Czech opera we’ve got to build a theater that’s suitable for opera–and the sooner the better.”

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