Szene aus "Die verkaufte Braut": Mittig stehen ein Sänger und eine Sängerin auf Strohballen, die zu einer Pyramide gebaut wurden. Außendrum stehen weiter Sänger*innen, die alle auf die beiden Sänger deuten
Opera

Die verkaufte Braut / The Bartered Bride

Bedřich Smetana

Marie loves Hans and Hans loves Marie. But Hans is a stranger in the city, and Marie is promised to Wenzel, the son of the landowner Micha, in order to settle an old debt. The cunning marriage broker Kecal even offers Hans money if he will renounce Marie.

Surprisingly, Hans accepts – or is it merely a ruse? Bedřich Smetana’s opera premiered in Prague in 1866. In a revised version featuring a polka and a furiant, this work, which explores the soul of the Czech people, enjoyed huge success around the world. In her colourful staging in the style of the 1980s, director Mariame Clément examines the meaning of homeland and what it is to be foreign. With a sense of rhythm and poetry, an understanding of life’s vagaries and wielding a sharp scalpel, she gradually uncovers the different layers of this cheerful (love) story to reveal a bitter core.

Comic opera in three acts
Libretto by Karel Sabina, German version by Kurt Honolka, using some passages by Carl Riha and Winfried Höntsch

Performed in German with German and English supertitles

Premiere
8. March 2019,

No further performances in the current season.

Premiere cast

Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden
 Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden



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