|
|
However, it was nonetheless thanks to Ludwig’s support that he managed to complete Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (premiered 1868) and the Ring; the latter was finally performed as a complete tetralogy in 1876 in Wagner’s own theater in Bayreuth, also largely bankrolled by Ludwig. Though at the peak of his worldwide fame, Wagner nonetheless was upset that the newly unified Germany failed to appreciate his music in the way he had hoped for. He composed Parsifal (1882) before dying in Venice in 1883.
In comparison with Wagner, Bedřich Smetana’s life was in many ways as difficult and ultimately rather tragic. Born in 1824, he grew up in a rural environment around the brewery that his father owned. From a relatively early age, he had contacts with Czech nationalists such as his teachers Josef Jungmann and František Josef Smetana (the latter was Bedřich’s cousin), so by the time he arrived in Prague in the early 1840s he was already a committed nationalist. His earliest musical works are dances for piano, but his ambitions expanded after his musical training in Prague and his meeting with Franz Liszt in 1848. Smetana was actively involved in the 1848 revolution in Prague, and though he avoided any sort of prosecution, he found the cultural and political climate of the postrevolution reaction so severe that in 1856 he took a job as the music director in Göteborg, Sweden. His most notable compositions from the 1850s include several symphonic poems—a form he explored under Liszt’s influence—such as Richard III (1858), Wallensteins Lager (“Wallenstein’s Camp”—1861), and Hakon Jarl (1861), none of which are especially nationalistic. Also during this time his first wife died, wounding him deeply; his second marriage was often unhappy.
In the early 1860s, repression of Czech nationalism subsided, and when Smetana learned that there was an opening for the post of the director of the Czech opera, he enthusiastically applied and was accepted. In 1864 a competition was held to select the best new Czech national opera, which Smetana entered with his first opera, Braniboři v Čechách (“The Brandenburgers in Bohemia”), and won. His status as one of the leading figures in Czech culture rapidly consolidated.