Ten lásky sen (The Bartered Bride)

Prodaná nevěsta was first given at the Provisional Theatre in Prague on 30 May 1866, three weeks before the Austro-Prussian war emptied the city; the original two-act version with spoken dialogue failed. Smetana revised it four times over the following four years, adding the dances, turning the dialogue into recitative and arriving in 1870 at the three-act score now played. It became the work by which Czech opera was measured abroad, reaching Vienna in 1892 and New York in 1909 — a village comedy in which a marriage broker is outwitted by the very couple whose contract he is selling.