National Theatre reopens

2016

The rebuilt National Theatre on the Vltava embankment Place: National Theatre, Vltava embankment Figures: Bedřich Smetana, in the orchestra stalls, deaf · Marie Sittová as Libuše · the audience that funded both buildings Smetana composed Libuše in 1869–72 with a single instruction in the score: it is to be performed only on great national occasions. The first such occasion was the National Theatre's first opening in June 1881. The second is the reopening, after the fire and the rebuild, on November 18, 1883. The composer is in the stalls. He is fifty-nine. He has been deaf for nine years and is beginning to lose his mind to tertiary syphilis. He cannot hear his own opera. He watches the conductor's beat and the singers' mouths. His portrait, hung above the proscenium for the occasion, looks down at the man it was painted from. The opera begins, in the prophetic mode, with the princess Libuše foreseeing Prague. The subject dates from 1883; this photograph was taken in 2016.