Shakespeare and Opera in the Czech Lands

Shakespeare inspired Czech Romantic composers almost exclusively in the genre of comic opera, but adapting a Shakespeare play into the form of a high-quality libretto was an extraordinarily difficult task, which then had to be matched by the musical setting and performance. Moreover, it was difficult to compete with Verdi’s Otello premiered in Prague in 1888 as the first production outside of Italy. Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that Shakespearean comic operas were first successfully produced at Prague’s National Theatre only once the quality of the opera company there had been stabilized, that is, around 1900: Karel Weis’s Viola (1892), Zdeněk Fibich’s The Tempest (1895), Josef Nešvera’s Perdita (1897), and Josef Bohuslav Foerster’s Jessika (1905). While it was through theatre that political questions were dealt with in the Czech lands under Habsburg rule, and Shakespeare became a leading artistic authority for the Czechs (unlike Schiller, whose legacy was fostered mainly by German theatres), the operas of Czech composers based on Shakespearean subjects aroused the hope of promoting the Czech arts in the struggle for national independence in an international context.