Page:Bohemia; a brief evaluation of Bohemia's contribution to civilization (1917).pdf/31

 comes. Conversation with me is impossible. I hear my own piano-forte playing only in fancy, not in reality. I cannot hear the playing of anybody else, not even the performance of a full orchestra in opera or in concert. I have no pain in the ear, and the physicians agree that my disease is perhaps a paralysis of the ear nerves and the labyrinth. And so I am wholly determined to endure my sad fate in a calm and manly way as long as I live.” Yet Smetana was destined to endure a trial worse than that which he had made up his mind to bear with patient courage. In 1882 the great master showed symptoms of mental instability. He was attacked by hideous delusions. His memory failed him. On April 22, 1884, his friend J. Srb brought him into the asylum for the insane in Prague, and there Smetana died in utter eclipse of mind, on May 12, 1884. His funeral was a royal one, the entire nation grieved for the dead genius.

Smetana composed eight operas: “Braniboři v Čechách” (The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, first performance January 5, 1866), “Prodaná nevěsta” (The Bartered Bride, mentioned above), “Dalibor” (name of a knight from the end of the 15th century, hero of a folk legend, first performance May 16, 1868), “Dvě vdovy” (Two widows, March 27, 1874), “Hubička” (The Kiss, August 31, 1876), “Tajemství” (The Secret, September 18,1878), “Libuše” (the daughter of the legendary prince Krok, who reigned after the death of her father over the Bohemians a festival opera, the climax of Smetana’s dramatic music, first performance at the opening of the National Theater, June 11, 1881) and “Čertova stěna” (The Devil’s Wall, a folk legend from the 13th century, October 29,1882). The comic operas “Hubička” and “Tajemství”, just as charming as “The Bartered Bride”, and the romantic opera “Čertova stěna” were written in total deafness.

From all these immortal works only one has been given in America, “The Bartered Bride”. And it is a most deplorable fact that it is, alas! the only Bohemian opera which ever entered the American stage. The first performance of “The Bartered Bride” at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on February 19, 1909, was a