When Dvořák premiered his monumental cantata The Spectre’s Bride in 1885, it was a roaring success. Now, there is an opportunity to relive the thunderous spectacle first-hand, in an unprecedented rendition by the finest Czech musicians – among them the Prague Philharmonia, the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno and conductor Petr Altrichter on SVATEBNÍ KOŠILE from Navona Records.

The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (Czech: Braniboři v Čechách) is a three-act opera, the first by Bedřich Smetana. The Czech libretto was written by Karel Sabina, and is based on events from Czech history. The work was composed in the years 1862–1863. Smetana and Sabina wrote the opera at a time of great Czech patriotism, with the pending opening of a new theatre for production of Czech operas in Prague. The opera received its first performance at the Provisional Theatre (or the "Interim Theatre"), Prague, on 5 January 1866, and the first performance was a success. The first UK performances were in April 1978 by Hammersmith Municipal Opera. The first professional production in the UK, conducted by Vilém Tauský, was not until 1994.

Magdalena Kožená presents a recital of Czech songs, together with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. The first impression of Czech songs may be atmospheric nature scenes, or stories about pretty peasant girls and village pranks, but the selection on this album demonstrates that the imagination of Czech song composers stretched far wider. For example, Bohuslav Martinů’s Nipponari were inspired by Japanese culture, whereas his folksy Songs on One Page obtain a deeper meaning knowing that he wrote them in the US, having fled the Nazi threat.

Leoš Janáček and the generation younger Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky were major 20th-century composers markedly influenced by folk music, bringing it to bear in their own creations. Their works feature on the remarkable new album Village Stories of the world-renowned Prague Philharmonic Choir, led by Lukáš Vasilek. Stravinsky’s Les noces, Janáček’s Nursery Rhymes and Bartók’s Village Scenes are brought back to life on new recordings. Vasilek invited to the studio superb soloists, including the soprano Kateřina Kněžíková, the mezzo-soprano Jana Hrochová, the tenor Boris Stepanov and the baritone Jiří Brückler, as well as the outstanding pianists Zoltán Fejérvári and Kirill Gerstein, the Zemlinsky Quartet and the Belfiato Quintet. Supraphon will release the album on 27 October 2023 on CD and in digital formats.

Like many of Janáček’s late masterpieces, the genesis of the ‘Diary’ is unseparable from its composer’s intense, obsessional love for Kamila Stösslová. A song-cycle like no other, here it’s the main work in a recital which showcases the extraordinary talents of Nicky Spence, Václava Housková and the vocal trio Voice.

Krausberry is the Czech blues-rock and hard rock band founded by singer Martin Kraus in 1984 after leaving the band Bluesberry. In 1991, Krausberry members broke up due to dissatisfied business activity, but after five years, the band regrouped and still touring. Nálada is the band's sixth studio album released in 2007 through local Czech label Levné Knihy KMa.

The Devil's Wall (Czech: Čertova stěna) is a comic-romantic opera in three acts, with music by Bedřich Smetana and libretto by Eliška Krásnohorská, in their third operatic collaboration. The subtext of the plot is a Czech legend of a sheer rockface that overlooks the Vltava river, near the old monastery of Vyšši Brod, where the Devil was said to have halted the building of the monastery by damming the Vltava, which then rose and flooded the site.

In May 1876, even before the premiere of The Kiss, eliška Krásnohorská offered Smetana a subject that combined a story set in a folk environment with elements of fairy tale, magic, and superstition. The action was very complicated, and the material was not used, but certain motifs from it found their way into the libretto for their next opera together, The Secret. Like in The Bartered Bride, the story features two peasants with differing personalities. Atmosphere is provided by the mysterious surroundings of the ruins of old Bezděz Castle, and the plot’s various snares and pitfalls combine a realistic story with a tall tale. Old love amounts to a powerful motif. Somewhere below Bezděz Castle live two widowers, Kalina and Malina, who bear a mutual grudge for reasons lying in the distant past, when the poor man Kalina asked for the hand of Róza, the rich peasant Malina’s sister, but he was rejected by her family. He then married a poor girl, and because he was industrious and, above all, defiant, he managed to build a house, which is just about to be finished.

The Two Widows (Czech: Dvĕ vdovy) is a two-act Czech opera by Bedřich Smetana based on the libretto of Emanuel Züngel. The libretto is based on Jean Pierre Felicien Mallefille's one-act play Les deux veuves. The opera was composed between June 1873 and January 1874, and its premiere took place on 27 March 1874 at the Prague Czech Theatre under the direction of Smetana. However, this premiere was not successful and the opera was rewritten in 1874. The spoken dialogue was replaced by through-composed recitatives and some of the music and characters were reworked. The second premiere on 20 October 1874 was very successful. A further revised version was premiered on 17 March 1878, under Adolf Čech. For a later performance in Hamburg in 1882 "Smetena reluctan[t]ly added a trio in act 1 and an alternative ending to Agnes' aria in act 2, and consented to a redivision of the opera into three acts".

The opera Libuše occupies a unique position in Czech national culture. Smetana composed it as a festive opera to be performed on occasions celebrating the Czech nation. The first such was theopening of the National Theatre in Prague in 1881, when the work was premiered. Supraphon's catalogue already contains CDs of Smetana's Libuše in two live complete recordings documenting the interpretational mastery of the artists associated with the National Theatre: the legendary recording of the performance in 1983 marking the reopening of the theatre after its reconstruction andfeaturing Gabriela Beňačková in the lead role, and the 1995 recording of the new production of Libuše at the National, when the lead role was undertaken by Eva Urbanová.

For Czech audiences, arias from The Bartered Bride, this jewel of Czech classical opera production from the pen of Bedřich Smetana, represent truly popular, indeed timeless tunes. Supraphon is now launching this famous comic opera back onto the market, in a version featuring star performances of international stars Gabriela Beňačková as Mařenka, Peter Dvorský as Jeník, and Richard Novák as Kecal. Playing on an equally brilliant form here was the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zdeněk Košler, backed by the vocal forces of the Prague Philharmonic Choir.

In April 1920, following 12 years of intricate work, Leoš Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr. Brouček premiered at the National Theatre in Prague, the one and only work of his to do so. A century later, the self-same theatre’s soloists, chorus and orchestra returned to the “Broučekiad” at the Rudolfinum in Prague. The present studio recording, after Neumann’s and Jílek’s only the third in the Supraphon catalogue, was thus in part made owing to the closure of theatres and concert halls during the recent Covid pandemic.

After his symphonic poem Má vlast, Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, is arguably his most popular work. This recording, issued by Harmonia Mundi, is taken from a live concert performance at The Barbican in May 2011, and leaves one in no doubt as to why Jirí Belohlávek has made the Czech repertoire such a splendid calling card during his tenure as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned is an album by Czech underground band The Plastic People of the Universe. It was recorded in 1974/75, mainly at Houska Castle, enabled by the castle's then warden Svatopluk Karásek, with some songs being recorded in Prague. The album could not be officially released and distributed under the former Communist regime in Czechoslovakia; instead fans duplicated tapes with one another, often resulting in poor technical quality. It was released in 1978 in France by SCOPA Invisible Production. In the Czech Republic a remastered version was published on CD in 2001 by Globus Music. The album title is a parody of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Most of the songs on the record are settings of poems by Egon Bondy.

The second release in LSO Live’s cycle of Janáček opera recordings, Katya Kabanova tells a story of love, entrapment and, ultimately, tragedy. The album’s cast includes the superb tenor Simon O’Neill and, appearing in one of her signature roles as seen at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Amanda Majeski as Katya.