FROM CRISIS TO STASIS: DEPICTING HISTORY IN CZECH OPERA AFTER 1948
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F23%3A10477968" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/23:10477968 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=42JJnxNJX7" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=42JJnxNJX7</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.54759/MUSICOLOGY-2023-0104" target="_blank" >10.54759/MUSICOLOGY-2023-0104</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
FROM CRISIS TO STASIS: DEPICTING HISTORY IN CZECH OPERA AFTER 1948
Original language description
Every time the Czech nationhood has appeared to be threatened, stage (re) interpretations of national history have been produced with renewed urgency. This was the case after the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the following Nazi occupation, and again after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968. In this article, I engage with the ways motives and themes used to raise national awareness in these times of crisis were naturalized, or neutralized, to serve the cultural politics of state socialism in the decades that followed, and especially the period of "normalization" in the 1970s and 1980s. I focus on two contemporary operas on historical themes that were produced at the Prague National Theatre in relation to its centenary celebrations: Zuzana Vojirova by Jiri Pauer (NT 1959 and 1981) and Mistr Jeronym by Ivo Jirasek (NT 1984). They both help demonstrate the paradoxical demand for grand themes from national history on the one hand, and absence of concrete meaning on the other. I argue that Zuzana Vojirova ultimately served the political needs of "normalization" much better than Mistr Jeronym. Pauer's "folk opera" used traditional dramaturgy and conventionalized musical means and capitalized on the popularity of its subject matter during World War II. With its romanticized depiction of the past and generic form of nationalism, it could be consumed as a politically neutral and "timeless" product of high culture. Mistr Jeronym proved much more controversial, due to its ambiguous depiction of the eponymous Hussite hero as well as its modernist music. The libretto was written by the blacklisted poet Karel Siktanc, a fact that remained well hidden at the time. Like Zuzana Vojirova, Mistr Jeronym was discursively framed through references to World War II, which worked to suppress the more recent historical parallels the opera could evoke (e.g., to the self-immolation of the Czech student Jan Palach in protest of the 1968 invasion). While the opera thus carried a certain subversive potential, I suggest that it was so obscured as to effectively become unreadable to contemporary audiences.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60403 - Performing arts studies (Musicology, Theater science, Dramaturgy)
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2023
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Hudební věda
ISSN
0018-7003
e-ISSN
2694-6998
Volume of the periodical
60
Issue of the periodical within the volume
1
Country of publishing house
CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC
Number of pages
20
Pages from-to
49-68
UT code for WoS article
001098474400006
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85162259068