Visions of the Village Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera

Visions of the Village offers a nuanced account of the cultural history, political salience, and social resonances of Czech village operas, especially those by composers Bed%rich Smetana, Antonín Dvo%rák, and Leoš Janácek. By examining music-critical writings, institutional and government records, letters, and other archival sources, Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how musical representations of the idealized village acquired and provided meaning for Czech audiences, serving as the basis for understandings of a wide range of sociocultural and political issues, including gender, class, nationalism, imperialism, ethnicity, and race.

This book explores how operas like Smetana's The Bartered Bride, Dvo%rák's The Devil and Kate, and Janácek's Jenufa served as focal points for the articulation of an essentialist sense of Czech identity. In addition to composers and their operas, Campo-Bowen investigates the output of critics, administrators, and other urban intellectuals like Otakar Hostinský, František Adolf %Subert, and Zdenek Nejedlý to understand the impact of village operas on public discourse. Through this in-depth analysis, this book uncovers how music functions at the nexus of the desire for politically resonant ethnoracial identities and the representation of ruralness, from the nineteenth century to the present.

Christopher Campo-Bowen is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at Virginia Tech. He holds a PhD in musicology from UNC Chapel Hill, and his academic research focuses on the relationships between opera, race/ethnicity, gender, and empire, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.