About the work
Das Geheimnis (Czech: Tajemství, The Secret) is a comic opera in three acts by Bedřich Smetana to a libretto by Eliška Krásnohorská, their second collaboration after “The Kiss.” Smetana completed the score in May 1878; it premiered on 18 September 1878 at the New Czech Theatre in Prague.
Plot
Two feuding town councillors, Kalina and Malina, are locked in a decades-old dispute rooted in a failed youthful romance between Kalina and Malina’s sister Róza. When an old will hints at treasure hidden within the walls of a house, Kalina secretly searches for it, while his daughter and Malina’s nephew fall in love despite their families’ enmity. In the end Kalina realises that the true treasure lies in reconciling with Róza.
Cultural significance
Unlike the more stock figures of Smetana’s earlier operas, Krásnohorská drew Kalina and Róza as psychologically more finely observed characters. Written while the composer was already deaf and gravely ill, the work found little success in his lifetime, receiving only about a dozen performances before vanishing from the stage for two decades, until it returned permanently to the Prague National Theatre’s repertoire in 1922.