Songs with piano accompaniment became one of the main ways through which the Romantic composers could convey even the most intimate emotional impulses with purity, concentration, and authenticity. Of course, such feelings are best expressed after nightfall, as performers Adam Plachetka and David Švec are aware. For this performance, they will guide the audience through a world of evening songs and nocturnal dreams.

EPSG:4326

Czech Chamber Music Society • Adam Plachetka

Rudolfinum

Smetana and the librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who expected the “national opera” to be an idyllic picture of the Czech countryside, with its inhabitants being virtuous and governed by high morals. The Bartered Bride is thus far more humorous than “national”. Nonetheless, its humour is precisely of the type Czechs so love, and hence Smetana’s opera, abounding in irony, scathing, occasionally even cynical, wit, as well as tenderness and simple joie de vivre, has ultimately become “national” in the best sense of the word ...

The Bartered Bride

National Theatre

Antonín Dvořák’s two most successful operas, The Devil and Kate, and Rusalka, are based on fairy-tale motifs. Blending folk and humorous with lyrical and fantasy elements is one of the typical (and still very popular) traits of Czech drama. Dvořák created a masterly patchwork of contrasting scenes – folksy, breezy, fiendishly fervent and courtly noble.

The Devil and Kate

National Theatre Prague

A concert that gives space to young performers and new musical voices. In the Bethlehem Chapel, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra joins students of the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory, a school that for decades has been one of the most distinctive centres of jazz, popular and musical-theatre education in the Czech Republic.

David Švec

Events

Upcoming events

Aug 27, 2026 - Jun 27, 2027

The Bartered Bride · Národní divadlo

Sep 3, 2026 - Mar 21, 2027

The Devil and Kate · Národní divadlo

Dec 3, 2026

The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and The Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory · Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra

Past events

Dec 16, 2024

Czech Chamber Music Society • Adam Plachetka · Czech Philharmonic

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in The Bartered Bride by Smetana

Národní divadlo

Conductor in The Devil and Kate by Dvořák

Národní divadlo

About

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