The story of Zdeněk Fibich’s Šárka depicts the Maidens’ War, an uprising that broke out after the death of the mythical Princess Libuše, with the women striving to regain the privileges they enjoyed during her reign.
The legend can be found in a variety of literary sources, from Cosmas of Prague’s 12th–century Chronica Boemorum to Alois Jirásek’s ever-popular Old Czech Legends, first published in 1894. During the 19th-century National Revival, Bohemian mythology inspired a number of artists, influenced in part by the fake Manuscript of Dvůr Králové and Manuscript of Zelená Hora, motifs of which even appear in the decorations of Prague’s National Theatre. Besides Libuše and Šárka, the legend of the women’s uprising reflects in Smetana’s cycle My Country (the tone poems Vyšehrad and Šárka), as well as in Otakar Ostrčil’s opera The Death of Vlasta. Fibich evidently closely worked on Šárka with the librettist Anežka Schulzová, a pupil of the prominent Czech author Jaroslav Vrchlický, with their amorous relationship having had a positive impact on their endeavours.
The opera premiered on 28 December 1897 at the National Theatre in Prague, conducted by Adolf Čech. The production, directed by Adolf Krössing, featured scenery by Robert Holzer and Mikoláš Aleš, with the latter’s visual style becoming a traditional model for the costumes in the majority of the adaptations that followed. The first to portray Šárka was the outstanding 28-year-old soprano Růžena Maturová (also the first to perform Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka).
The National Theatre's new production will be presented more than four decades after the most recent performance of Šárka at the National Theatre. It will be conducted by Robert Jindra, music director of the National Theatre Opera, who has invited the German stage director Kay Link.
