30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Dalibor' Review: At Bard, Beauty From Behind Bars
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
This year's opera rarity at Bard SummerScape, in Dutchess County, is Bedřich Smetana's 'Dalibor' (1868), running through Aug. 3, a tuneful Romantic work hampered by a creaky, static libretto that was translated from German into Czech. The title character, a 15th-century knight with a popular following, spends the opera imprisoned for killing a government official in revenge for the execution of his beloved friend, the musician Zdeněk. Milada, the official's sister, first demands Dalibor's blood from the king but then falls in love with him and plots his rescue—there's a 'Fidelio'-type adventure with Milada disguising herself as a boy to get into the prison. It doesn't end happily.
