“The Time of Miracles”: Cosmopolitan Dreams and the Czech National Theater at the 1892 Exhibition of Music and Theater in Vienna
In the course of seven summer days, the music history of the Czech lands was forever changed. From 1 June to 7 June, 1892, the National Theater of Prague participated in the International Exhibition of Music and Theater in Vienna. Although the company, led by their director František Šubert, had high hopes that their carefully structured contribution to the festival would gain some notice among international audiences, the success they garnered during their first night’s performance—featuring Bedřich Smetana’s opera The Bartered Bride--went far beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The victory of a Czech theater company in the capital of Austria-Hungary had wide ramifications for both imperial and foreign recognition, leading to increased visibility and new performance opportunities for Czech opera.
In this paper, I investigate the various ways Czech cultural figures and institutions responded to the opportunities and consequences of their Viennese residency. By examining what they hoped to gain if they succeeded at the exhibition, what they feared they might lose if they failed, and how they dealt with their unexpected and intense popularity, I offer two substantive, interconnected conclusions. Revising the conventional ethnocentric, oppositional view of Czech music, I show that the Czechs harbored a decidedly cosmopolitan, European outlook in preparing for, and responding to, the Vienna residency. Secondly, I contend that the Czech visit to the exhibition underscores the event’s importance as a means by which the Czech National Theater could brand itself—especially through the runaway success of The Bartered Bride—as representative of a fully developed, culturally mature nation within both a Habsburg imperial framework and a larger European context. With cultural maturity, it was argued, came political maturity, and this view would have sweeping consequences in the years leading up to the First World War.
In the course of seven summer days, the music history of the Czech lands was forever changed. From 1 June to 7 June, 1892, the National Theater of Prague participated in the International Exhibition of Music and Theater in Vienna. Although the company, led by their director František Šubert, had high hopes that their carefully structured contribution to the festival would gain some notice among international audiences, the success they garnered during their first night’s performance—featuring Bedřich Smetana’s opera The Bartered Bride--went far beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The victory of a Czech theater company in the capital of Austria-Hungary had wide ramifications for both imperial and foreign recognition, leading to increased visibility and new performance opportunities for Czech opera.
In this paper, I investigate the various ways Czech cultural figures and institutions responded to the opportunities and consequences of their Viennese residency. By examining what they hoped to gain if they succeeded at the exhibition, what they feared they might lose if they failed, and how they dealt with their unexpected and intense popularity, I offer two substantive, interconnected conclusions. Revising the conventional ethnocentric, oppositional view of Czech music, I show that the Czechs harbored a decidedly cosmopolitan, European outlook in preparing for, and responding to, the Vienna residency. Secondly, I contend that the Czech visit to the exhibition underscores the event’s importance as a means by which the Czech National Theater could brand itself—especially through the runaway success of The Bartered Bride—as representative of a fully developed, culturally mature nation within both a Habsburg imperial framework and a larger European context. With cultural maturity, it was argued, came political maturity, and this view would have sweeping consequences in the years leading up to the First World War.