Antonín Dvořák, The Jacobin (1889)

Outside the Czech Republic, It sure isn't common to see any Dvořák operas other than Rusalka. For the opportunity to see this one, we must thank some awesome hero on youtube who uploaded a 1974 Czechoslovakian teleplay with--glory be!--English subs (I assume they were added after the fact by a fan, but it's not wholly clear to me).

Very different from Rusalka,this: as you know, that one's basically The Little Mermaid only a tragedy, but here we have a kind of romantic comedy/family drama, on subject matter that could be serious, but ultimately turns out lighthearted.

So it's round about the time of the French Revolution. Bohuš and his wife Julie return to their (Czech) hometown in disguise. Bohuš is the local count's son, but they've long been estranged, initially because the father didn't like the son's choice of wife (for reasons never explained), but then later because he's supposed to have become one of those awful Jacobins, or at least a Jacobin sympathizer (not, I should emphasize, a Jacobite; that would make for a very different and much weirder story). The count declares that his villainous nephew Adolf is his new heir (well, he doesn't declare him "villainous"--I cannot imagine that anyone named Adolf would ever do anything bad!). Oh no! Meanwhile, there's Benda, the music teacher and choirmaster. His daughter Terinka is in love with Jiří, a commoner, but he wants her to marry the officious Burgrave (some sort of administrator, only ever referred to by this title). But they're both important members on the choir, and they threaten to fuck up their roles if he doesn't let them marry and generally prevail on his good nature, so that's all right. Bohuš and Julie come to him for protection, which he grants when they tell him a woeful tale of their exile and how they're musicians who've only been able to remember their native land through song and their kids have never seen it &c (although we never actually see these alleged kids--are we sure this isn't a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf situation?). Bohuš ends up being imprisoned by Alfred. The count is heartbroken because his son is gone and, he thinks, has joined a simply dreadful group, but Benda and Julie convince him otherwise and he's freed and gets reinstated as heir and everyone's happy except for Adolf and the Burgrave, which would be a good name for an artsy sort of musical duo.

I actually liked this a whole lot, notwithstanding the somewhat dated production. I got caught up in the drama, and hey, Dvořák. A lot of folk influences here, very fun. The Czech singers that no one has ever heard of are all fine. As far as Slavic composers go, I guess the difference between him and Rimsky-Korsakov is that Russia has enough cultural clout that even if the latter's operas aren't much performed abroad, they're still pretty readily available in video form, whereas most people don't think much about the Czech Republic. But this is good. I would LOVE to see more Dvořák operas.