Šárka is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in three acts, opus 51, by Zdeněk Fibich

Zdenek Fibich

Zdeněk Fibich was a Czech composer of classical music. Among his compositions are chamber works , symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas , melodramas including the substantial trilogy Hippodamia,...

 to a Czech libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Anežka Schulzová, his student and lover. Fibich composed the full score over the period of 8 September 1896 to 10 March 1897.. At the time, Czech audiences regarded Fibich with suspicion as being overly influenced by the music of Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

, and Fibich had selected the legend of Šárka for this operatic subject to try to counter such sentiments. Even so, the opera still contains use of Wagner's idea of leitmotif.

The subject matter, the Bohemian legend of Šárka

Šárka

The story of Šárka is a character in the so-called "Maidens' War" in Bohemian tradition. It first appeared in the twelfth-century Chronica Boëmorum of Cosmas of Prague, and later in the fourteenth-century Dalimil's Chronicle....

 which appears in 14th-century Czech literature, is related to that of Smetana

Bedrich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music...

's tone poem Má vlast

Má vlast

Má vlast is a set of six symphonic poems composed between 1874 and 1879 by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. While it is often presented as a single work in six movements and – with the exception of Vltava– is almost always recorded that way, the six pieces were conceived as individual works...

and the opera of the same name

Šárka (Janácek)

Šárka is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by Julius Zeyer, based on Bohemian legends of Šárka in Dalimil’s Chronicle...

 by Janáček

Leoš Janácek

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...

. Schulzová used as her primary literary source an 1880 version of the story by J. Vrchlický.

Performance history

The opera received its first performance at the Prague National Theatre on 28 December 1897. Šárka is Fibich's most popular opera and is regularly revived in the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 28 December 1897 (Conductor:)
Ctirad	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Bohumil Pták
Premysl	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Václav Viktorin
Sárka	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Růžena Maturová Růžena Maturová Růžena Maturová was a Czech operatic soprano whose international career began in the late 1880s and continued through the first decade of the 20th century....
Vitoraz	bass	Václav Kliment
Vlasta	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...	Anna Veverkova-Kettnerová
Libyna	soprano
Svatava	soprano
Mlada	soprano
Radka	mezzo-soprano
Castava	contralto Contralto Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
Hosta	contralto