Visiting Dvorak in Prague
Many of us are off traveling this summer for research and field work. This is the first in a series profiling students’ summer work.
At the beginning of June, doctoral student (historical musicology) Julia O’Toole went to Prague for a week-long trip into the Dvořák archives at the Czech Museum of Music.
Photo by Julia O’Toole. Dvořák’s piano at the Dvořák House Museum
Julia reports:
I was in Prague June 1-8, working with manuscripts and archival materials surrounding Dvořák’s comic opera Šelma Sedlák.The opera has been virtually unperformed since late 19th century with one or two exceptions, yet it is a quality piece with a lot to offer. I hope to discover through reception records, meetings with key Dvořák scholars in Prague, etc. why it is no longer done, and attempt to return it to the standard repertoire.
The main river on which Prague is built had surpassed its banks considerably while I was there, due to 12+ days of heavy rains. In 2002, similar flooding occurred, causing great devastation. This time, however, the city was prepared. Over 100 animals from the zoo were moved to higher ground. The river was braced with great metal barriers to help maintain its banks, and sandbagging could be seen throughout Old Town. A state of emergency was declared Sunday night eight hours after arriving in Prague. The Czech Museum of Music was closed indefinitely.
In spite of all of that, all of our appointments were kept, all materials viewed, and over 3200 pictures of scores, promotional material, reviews, etc. made it back to Boston. The summer will be spent doing a lot of translating from Czech.
