Czech-German Collaborations at the Metropolitan Opera in the Early Twentieth Century

In the early twentieth century, New York’s Metropolitan Opera produced four works by Czech composers: Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride in 1909, Karel Weis’s The Polish Jew in 1921, Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa in 1924, and Jaromír Weinberger’s Schwanda the Bagpiper in 1931. American critics associated these productions with exoticized notions of Czech culture and Czech nationalism. Yet, as this article shows, the four American productions also illuminate the multiethnic and multicultural environment of the Czech lands in the late Habsburg and early Czechoslovak eras. The 1909 Bartered Bride featured the famous Czech soprano Ema Destinnová and was choreographed by Czech dancer Otakar Bartík, but it was also prepared by Gustav Mahler, who presented himself as a Bohemian national in connection with the production. Weis’s The Polish Jew held an ambiguous status as a national work in Prague because it was written to a German libretto and first performed at Prague’s German Theater. The Bartered Bride, Jenůfa, and Schwanda the Bagpiper, moreover, were performed in German translations. And both The Polish Jew and Jenůfa were directed by Artur Bodanzky, the chief conductor of German repertoire at the Met, whose career started at Prague’s German Theater. Thus in New York, Czech repertoire benefitted from personalities associated with German-Bohemian circles, whereas in early twentieth-century Prague, Czech and German-Bohemian collaborations were considered taboo.