Biography (read more)
Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer of the Romantic era, born in Litomyšl, Bohemia, who worked in Prague, spent several years in Gothenburg, Sweden, and later returned permanently to Bohemia. His output centers on opera, including the comic masterpiece The Bartered Bride, as well as orchestral symphonic poems, chamber music, piano works, and choral compositions; his best-known orchestral achievement is the six-part cycle Má vlast, whose movement “Vltava” (The Moldau) remains widely performed. Afflicted by deafness and declining mental health in his final years, he died in a Prague lunatic asylum in 1884, officially attributed to senile dementia, though his family suspected syphilis.
Smetana is regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech national music, having pioneered a musical style closely tied to Czech cultural and political aspirations and established the foundational canon of Czech opera. Although relatively few of his works have entered the broader international repertoire, Má vlast and The Bartered Bride remain touchstones of Czech identity in music and continue to be performed and recorded worldwide, cementing his influence on later Czech composers such as Antonín Dvořák.
Sources: