About the work
Opera in three acts by Zdeněk Fibich to a libretto by Jaroslav Vrchlický, closely following William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," first performed on 1 March 1895 at the National Theatre in Prague under theatre director F. A. Šubert.
Plot
Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan, lives with his daughter Miranda on a remote island, where he commands the spirit Ariel and the subjugated Caliban. When the ship carrying his brother Antonio and the King of Naples, Alonso, passes by, he conjures a storm with his magic to lure his former betrayers ashore. Through the love between Miranda and Alonso's son Ferdinand, the story moves toward reconciliation, before Prospero finally renounces his magic.
Cultural significance
The premiere was well received by audiences and given several further performances by year's end, before Fibich's next opera, "Hedy," displaced it from the repertoire. As a late-Romantic opera, "Bouře" has since been performed only rarely; Czech critics still regard it as a long-underrated work with its own distinctive musical world.