Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial theory developed since the 1990s for the study of socialist and post-socialist East Central Europe, this chapter approaches opera as a crucial cultural site for (re)negotiating the relationship with “the West,” Soviet hegemony, and the Global South after 1948. It focuses on the ambivalence in representations of the racialized Other in Czech opera, which highlights the specific, lateral relationship between what was formally known as the Second and Third worlds. The chapter offers a close reading of the opera Jezero Ukereve (“Lake Ukerewe”) by Otmar Mácha, premiered in 1966. Featuring Black and mixed-race characters, the opera generally expresses empathy for and solidarity with the colonized populations, informed by the Czechs’ experience with German oppression, yet it unavoidably reproduces the colonial ideology of a civilizational mission. The opera is interpreted in relation to Czechoslovakia’s official Africa policy and the aesthetic debates about Czech New Music.

Most public music institutions in the Czech lands have been affected by the region’s complex political history. This chapter focuses on the politicization of public music institutions dedicated to opera (both opera theaters and opera companies, such as the Estates Theater, the Czech National Theater, and the New German Theater) and symphonic music (both concert halls, such as the Rudolfinum and the Municipal House, and the ensembles that performed in them). To avoid Pragocentrism, the chapter also explores music history in the north Bohemian spa town Teplice (Teplitz). Unlike Prague, Teplice remained a predominantly German-speaking city until the forced removal of the German population from the Czech lands after World War II. In both cities, musical institutions transformed according to their inhabitants’ social and political preferences, and musical works of the past entered the artistic canon in connection to patriotic and national agendas.

Throughout most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Habsburg court resided predominantly in Vienna. Consequently, the Habsburg monarchs of Bohemia rarely visited Prague, and visits of the entire court were even rarer because they were expensive both for the monarch and the city. Therefore, each coronation of a Habsburg emperor as the Bohemian king was a significant event reflecting both the immediate political context and more general cultural and historical trends, such as the role of music in court ceremonies and the relationship between Bohemian and Viennese musical practices. This chapter sketches the relationship between coronation music and music and operatic developments in Prague in general, particularly in connection to the coronations of Charles VI (1723), Maria Theresa (1743), Leopold II (1791), and Francis II (1792).

During the epochal 1895 Czechoslavonic Ethnographic Exhibition, the musicologist Otakar Hostinský described folksong as “one of the most significant and simultaneously most noble expressions of the people’s spiritual life.” In this chapter, the discourse is explored that gave rise to Hostinský’s statement by analyzing the relationship between Czech folk and art music– and the dialectical interdependence of those two terms– through the case studies of Bedřich Smetana’s operas Dvě vdovy (1874, rev. 1877) and Hubička (1876). These operas, and the reception of Smetana’s music more generally, were crucial components in the larger process of institutionalizing folk music as one of, if not the primary resource for musical nationalism in the toolbox of Czech composers. If we are to appreciate the fullness of Czech composers’ oeuvres in all their complexity, it behooves us to understand, and to dismantle wherever appropriate, the dominant narrative of their reliance on folksong.

In this chapter, Sarah Parker interviews Tom Floyd and Sophie Goldrick of Shadow Opera about the process of creating Veritable Michael, an opera and podcast inspired by Michael Field’s life and work. Tom Floyd is the Artistic Director of Shadow Opera and Sophie Goldrick is the Producer and mezzo-soprano, who sings the part of Katharine Bradley in the show. In this interview, they respond to questions about how they originally conceived the piece, why opera is a suitable form for telling Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper’s story, how the collaborative creative process worked, and how audiences have reacted to the performance and the podcast.

Performers have played a crucial role not only in communicating Schoenberg’s music and musical thought to a wider audience, but also in framing expectations and reception. This chapter places Schoenberg in a Romantic context of aesthetic, not least emotional, expectations and of exacting extension of performance possibilities and requirements, and suggests that some of the difficulties Schoenberg’s music experienced with audiences may be attributed to inadequate performance or to the unwillingness of musicians to perform it. Various performances of Schoenberg’s music are considered, starting with Schoenberg himself, taking in artists such as Alexander Zemlinsky, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, Eduard Steuermann, Marya Freund and Rudolf Kolisch, and concluding with conductor advocates such as Hans Rosbaud and, posthumously, Pierre Boulez.

In Schoenberg’s Vienna the theatre, more so than music, was central to cultural discourse; unsurprisingly, opera and musical drama interested Schoenberg from early on, and he returned to dramatic genres repeatedly throughout his compositional career. In surveying the lively and varied theatrical life of Vienna around 1900 and after, this chapter examines shifting trends in modernist drama – including changing fashions in staging and set design – alongside the influence of significant authors, artists and innovators. It locates the Viennese stage as a site for cultural exchange with other major European centres, and ultimately argues that, if written from the perspective of the theatre, the history of Viennese musical modernism would look quite different from the story of post-tonal progress that has dominated our narratives of Schoenberg’s creative trajectory.

When Shelley resolved to leave England for Italy with his family, he conceived his expatriation as a voluntary exile. Yet, for several months after their arrival, the Shelleys criss-crossed the peninsula like the Grand Tourists of old, visiting all its major cities and a few minor destinations, which Shelley described at length in his correspondence and often evoked in his poetry. A peculiarity of Shelley’s travel letters is his ambivalent attitude towards Italy, revealed by his constant juxtaposition of the magnificent beauty of its art and nature and the equally striking spectacle of the Italians’ degradation. However, as the first independence movements raised the promise of the country’s political and cultural resurgence, Shelley started to develop a greater appreciation of its inhabitants. At the same time, having finally settled, he turned his attention away from the wonders and contrasts of Italy to celebrate the simple life of his exile community.

Chapter 3 explores how the letters patent authorizing the duopoly laid the groundwork for a theatre of lavishness and innovation, thereby affiliating the restored stage to the costly improvements sweeping London after the Great Fire of 1666. Theatrical amelioration bolstered national pride – England was finally catching up with continental stagecraft – and made available luxurious viewing conditions previously reserved for court audiences. To realize these ends, management chose newly developed, upmarket neighborhoods to site their equally expensive baroque playhouses. Despite these improvements, the companies risked disappointing the very consumer expectations aroused by the culture of improvement. They simply could not afford new scenes, machines, and special effects for every play. Moreover, their playhouses were ruinously costly to operate – they required enormous manpower compared to early modern stages – and personnel expenses skyrocketed further whenever the companies ventured upon a dramatic opera or spectacle-heavy production. Not until the 1690s were strategies finally devised to escape the culture of improvement.

This chapter balances practical advice with aesthetic considerations to give an overview of a composer’s numerous roles in writing music for opera, dance, and theatre. The chapter begins with an overview of collaborative techniques and language, before understanding a bit more about how to shape musical ideas both by yourself and then through workshopping and rehearsal processes.

This chapter explores the voice as a complex, expressive instrument. It begins by outlining voice types, techniques, and styles – ranging from opera to musical theatre and popular music –  before looking at the relationship between language and music, and finally exploring the nature of idiomatic vocal writing and so-called extended techniques. The chapter finishes with a nod to the future of vocal music by briefly thinking about the voice in conjunction with electronics.

Debussy’s operatic aesthetic is defined as much in relation to the traditional genres of French opera as in relation to Wagner or naturalism. His style is built by both assimilation and opposition – the two processes can be simultaneous. The assimilation process, considered as a more or less visible and conscious form of appropriation, is the most commented on in the case of Pelléas et Mélisande: what Wagnerian processes does Debussy retain in his score? How does he integrate earlier styles into his writing? What elements of Russian music may have influenced him? And so on. The opposition process is less often analysed, for it is not confined to the rejection of a work, but hinges on this work by responding negatively to its musical concepts. With Debussy, negation becomes a powerful creative operation. One of the peculiarities of his personality is radicalism, amplified by the search for an ideal and uniqueness. To write is to gradually eliminate the easy solutions, the surplus, the conventions.