Christopher Campo-Bowen, Ph.D. 2018

Advisor: Annegret Fauser

Dissertation Title: “We Shall Remain Faithful”: Gender, Nationalism, and the Village Mode in Czech Opera, 1866–1916

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

At the outset of what is arguably the most famous of all Czech operas, Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride of 1866, two young lovers sing the words “zůstaneme věrni sobě”—“we shall remain faithful to each other.” This scene and these words were evoked in the eulogy for the legendary Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in 1937, capturing the powerful hold this opera and the country village it presented had on Czech culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In my dissertation, I argue that the ideal of village life held significant sway in operas throughout this period as the roots of Czech society. It epitomized normative ideas about gender and class as well as how these reflected the larger idea of the Czech nation, which in turn influenced the ways that Czech nationalism was constituted by various facets of society over the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Operas playing on the village setting used the concept flexibly, displaying a wide variety of social and communal possibilities. 

I will focus on four case studies: Smetana’s Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride] (1866) and Dvě vdovy [The Two Widows](1874), Antonín Dvořák’s Čert a Káča [The Devil and Kate] (1899), and Janáček’s Její pastorkyňa [Jenůfa] (1904). This dissertation will work towards two mutually interlinked and reinforcing goals, one theoretical and one historical. As to the former, I aim to explicate the village as a kind of operatic mode, whereby composers could encode social and political ideas through a uniquely constituted setting, though this is not to assume that all potentially political gestures were consciously put there. In the historical vein, I will provide an account of the ways in which these operas were influenced by and exerted influence on Czech culture. Through historical analysis and especially through my explorations of gender and nationalism, my dissertation will also engage with opera in Europe more broadly conceived. 

Recipient of the Glen Haydon Dissertation Award

Dr. Campo-Bowen is currently Assistant Professor of Musicology in the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech. He is at work on a book project that builds on his dissertation research, investigating how urbanites’ operatic visions of Czech rural cultures were instrumental in creating a coherent sense of ethnonational belonging. He has also published articles in several journals and presents his research widely. 

Pruett Fellow, 2012