DVORÁK : JAKOBIN

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 29th of July 2012 at 3 - 5.30 pm

DVORÁK: The Jacobin, an opera in three acts
Count Vilém.................. Miloslav Podskalský
Bohus........................... Roman Janál
Julie.............................. Maria Kobielska
Benda........................... Vladimír Dolezal
Terinka......................... Katerina Knezíkova
Jirí................................. Ales Briscein
Filip.............................. Ludek Vele
Adolf............................ Jirí Hájek
Lotinka......................... Yvona Skvárová
Kühn's Children's Chorus,
Prague National Theatre Opera Chorus & Orch/Tomás Netopil

INTRODUCTION
INFORMATION 
RECORDING


   Note the date of the setting of this opera: 1793 in (Czecho-)Bohemia, in the midst of the French Revolution.
    And what is a Jacobin when it is at home? Well, its habitat was in Paris (Rue Saint Jacques, Jacob Street) and it was a member of Robespierre's terrorist gang (affectionately known as  "the Jacobin Club", but that is actually a weapon to wield against people one does not like).  The hero of the story (Bohus, temporarily estranged son of Count Vilém of Harasov) is accused of being a Jacobin, but he is not; he was condemned to death by them! So the title is a little bit misleading, but he is a supporter of the liberty, equality, and fraternity movement, in his own country.
    I would like to write an appreciation of this opera, but it has come up at the start of the Olympic Games, which has been a big distraction. Nevertheless I have played my recording of it (issued in 1978, conducted by Jiri Pinkas) throughout the afternoon, and I have redd  (sic) through the libretto in Czech and English.
    By the way, a certain Henry Cope Colles (sic) gets quoted here and there as an expert on this and other operas by the composer (an article in The Musical Times, 1941). (Wasn't there a war on at that time, the Battle of Britain in particular, making reflection on "peasant operas" a luxury?)
    A synopsis is available in the Wikipedia article. To obtain a libretto you might have to buy the recording.

As I have said in the article on Rusalka:
Antonin Dvoràk (1841-1904) composed 10 operas. The only one of them I have (on audio discs) is “The Jacobin”, set in a Czech town in 1793; the term Jacobin was applied to extreme radicals in the French Revolution of 1789, and two of these rebellious types arrive (though they are Girondins rather than Jacobins); the basic plot is about an aristocratic father who repudiates his son because of a misalliance (his marriage to Julie), but reconciliation is finally achieved when the intrigues of a cousin (bearing the sinister name Adolf) are revealed. Another interesting work is “Dimitrij”, the tale of Dmitri the Pretender, a sequel to Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov”(after a drama by Pushkin). Then there is “The Devil and Kate, which involves an excursion into Hell, which turns out to be not at all unpleasant. But “Rusalka” is the one we all know, if only from the water-nymph’s song to the moon.