Here is a thing that some helpful person added subtitles to and uploaded. So what the heck, let's check out some lesser-known Smetana. Why wouldn't you?
So there's this guy Lukáš. He's always been in love with Vendulka, but his parents disapproved of the match so he married someone else. Now, both parents and wife are dead (score!), so he's after her again. She agrees to marry him, so he wants to seal the deal with a kiss. But she refuses to kiss before marriage, which seems like it's taking things a bit far even from a very puritanical perspective, but at least she has a novel reason: she's afraid it will disturb his dead wife's ghost. Um...right. Anyway, Lukáš get mad and goes out womanizing, which he later repents, and she feels bad too, so in the end, he agrees to marry her without kissing her and but then, no, she agrees to kiss him at once, and that's the end.
I really can't convey just how thin this plot is. The above is really all there is to it, and I didn't find either end of the couple particularly endearing. Still, the music is Smetana, and therefore really good. My subjective impression is that it's not quite as good as The Bartered Bride, but that might just be because that one has a better libretto. It's always hard to tell with these things.
Well, you could certainly do worse, but it's no great mystery why it's not as popular as The Bartered Bride.
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