Libuse is, by virtue of its subject and treatment, unlikely to travel very far outside Czech lands, except through recordings; and this is one of a historic occasion. Smetana wrote the opera to celebrate the coronation of the Emperor Franz Josef as King of Bohemia, but when that event did not take place, the performance was delayed until, much more suitably, the opening of the long-awaited Czech National Theatre. The present recording was made at the reopening of that theatre in 1983.
The work is really a patriotic pageant, static and celebratory, with such plot as there is concerning the mythical founder of Prague, Libuse, and her marriage to the peasant Premysl, founder of the first Czech dynasty. There are important parts for a large number of soloists involved in dynastic wrangling and in a not very compelling sub-plot about jealous misunderstanding: Eva Depoltova seizes what is almost the work's only occasion for raw human emotion when she confesses her love for Chrudos (firmly sung by Antonin Svorc), despite having pretended to prefer his brother Stahlav (Leo Marian Vodicka, sounding a little strained at times). Vaclav Zitek makes a fine, heroic Premysl; but the triumphant performance comes, as it must, from Gabriela Benackova. The opera concludes with a series of tableaux in which Libuse prophesies the future kings and heroes who will assure the stability and greatness of the nation. At the end of a long performance her voice is undimmed in its ringing splendour; and earlier, as near the very start, the beauty of her tone and line seeks out all the warmth, character and humanity which she proves to be latent in Smetana's spacious but seemingly plain vocal writing.
Libuse is scarcely Smetana's greatest opera, as he liked to claim, but especially in so splendid a performance from Benackova, and under the grave but impassioned direction of Zdenek Kosler, it makes remarkably compelling gramophone listening. The live recording includes some applause, but little other audience intervention in what must have been a solemnly moving occasion in 1983. There is a good, helpful essay in the booklet and a full text and translations into English, French and German. The English version is bathetic, sometimes too amusingly so, and marred by misprints: a pity.'