ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — Did we miss last year’s Bedřich Smetana bicentennial? Seems so in much of North America, though conductor Leon Botstein is exactly the person to lead the way into the rich but little-known continent of Smetana operas in this, the 201st year since the composer’s birth. Best known for the ebullient, folksy Bartered Bride, Smetana composed nine operas, concluding with an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night left unfinished at his death in 1884.
With typically steadfast conviction, Botstein chose Smetana’s only tragedy, the 1868 Dalibor, for Bard Summerscape in its U.S. staged premiere, the July 27 performance being largely successful and perhaps a revelation to some. Though its title character is a heroic 15th-century freedom fighter, the opera has phantoms and dream sequences characterized by an entrancing, visually dynamic production that employs holographs designed by Bruno de Lavenère (known for his work in the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony). The compelling package included a dramatically committed cast that didn’t quite add up to the A-level opera Botstein is sure that Dalibor is. But it’s up there — a piece I want to live with.
Smetana evolved into a harmonic adventurer who, at times, heralded the anguish-steeped sonorities Janáček would write decades later, with many-layered orchestral textures that have a turbulent underbelly. Vocal lines soar over the orchestral crucible, often at the service of characterizing what production director Jean-Romain Vesperini describes in his program notes as “emotional idealism” rather than psychological realism.
Most characters have deep soliloquy moments and, in episodes of transcendence from that darkness, ethereal treble sonorities with much magic from the harp writing. The opera isn’t above drawing on well-worn operatic conventions seemingly as an insurance policy, such as patriotic marches and a barroom chorus that’s a clichéd spin on similar Damnation of Faust moments. Well, Smetana was meeting the audience on its own terms. And those less-exalted qualities didn’t stop Gustav Mahler from championing Dalibor during his years at the Vienna State Opera.
Somehow, the opera was initially accused of being unduly Wagnerian, even though its format is that of a traditional numbers opera with cleverly skirted applause points that would otherwise break the tension. The Fidelio-like scenario has its share of twists: The condemned Dalibor is rescued in Act III by the woman (disguised as a boy) who condemned him in Act I. Meanwhile, Dalibor longs for his deceased best friend Zdeněk with passion that seems to go beyond the usual blood-brothers trope.
Rather than leaving the audience to guess about this, director Vesperini employs a holograph showing the men intensely meeting face to face — in spirit? — before walking in separate directions. Nothing was spelled out, but it’s a riveting coup de théâtre, with Smetana’s music at its most imaginative. Throughout the opera, high-tech projections had the stage constantly morphing between cathedral-like interiors and small-town Europe exteriors.
The singing was mighty, especially remarkable since tenor John Matthew Myers (Dalibor) and soprano Cadie J. Bryan (Milada, the rescuer), both lyric voices with extra power, replaced singers who ran into visa problems. They brought needed magnetism to all vocal and dramatic challenges posed by the rather improbable libretto. Other singers were well-matched, with vocal production that had an Eastern European edge warranted by the opera’s endless ability to put characters in states of desperation.
In a way, this opera doesn’t have secondary characters, giving good musico-dramatic opportunities to Terrence Chin-Loy (Vítek), Eric Greene (Budivoj), Erica Petrocelli (Jitka), Alfred Walker (King Vladislav), and Wei Wu (Beneš, the jailer). Botstein is often praised for pulling together good productions of such rarely heard operas, and this time his conducting with the American Symphony Orchestra can also be lauded for massaging awkward orchestral moments, such as the Act II finale. What can sound like a gratuitously loud, out-of-left-field musical exclamation point unfolded with near-perfect organic sense.
Remaining performances of Dalibor are July 30, Aug. 1, and 3 at the Fisher Center at Bard. Livestreams of the opera are July 30 and Aug. 2.
