Dance of the Comedians from “The Bartered Bride”

Listening to music from Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, which was first performed in Prague in 1866, it is not difficult to work out where Dvorak found at least some of the inspiration for his Slavonic Dances. Set in a country village at festival time, Smetana’s comic opera echoes throughout with Czech folk music, most obviously and most attractively of all in the orchestral dances that occur at regular intervals in the three acts. The so-called Comedians’ Dance comes from a colourful circus scene which, though it has little to do with the tortuous love affair of Marenka and Jenik at the centre of the plot, supplies a welcome touch of razzmatazz near the beginning of the third act. The dancers (clowns or acrobats rather than comedians) burst into life with an energetic gesture from the orchestra and perform their act to a brilliantly scored bustle of activity in the strings and tuneful encouragement in woodwind and brass. The teasing ending is as effective as the explosive beginning.