Overture to The Bartered Bride

Smetana composed The Bartered Bride between 1863 and 1866, and the first performance in Prague on 30 May 1866 drew a poor house — the city was emptying ahead of the Prussian advance. He revised the opera four times over the following years, adding dances and replacing the spoken dialogue with recitative. The overture, however, stayed as it was from the beginning and was in fact written before most of the score. It is a fugal exposition in the strings that turns into a headlong dance, and it entered the concert repertoire independently of the opera.