ABSTRACT
Among the many accomplished women of the Czech nineteenth century, the author, educator, and activist Eliška Krásnohorská (1847–1926) is an undeniably iconic figure, through her personal achievements as well as those for women in public discourse. Krásnohorská’s tireless contributions to the Women’s Movement—as the founder of the Minerva vocational institute for women, the editor of the journal Ženské listy (Women’s Pages), the international correspondent on Women’s Rights in Bohemia, and the author of self-actualising novels for young female readers—have long been recognised and analysed in scholarly literature. But for musicians, Krásnohorská’s participation in the early years of Czech-language opera represents a much more problematic narrative, where her visionary lyricism and musico-dramatic sensibilities are overshadowed by critical controversy and highly gendered recriminations. For despite her authorship of over fifteen librettos for seven prominent male composers, Krásnohorská’s work has been cast as a delimiting factor within a masculinist Czech operatic historiography, her partnership with the ailing Bedřich Smetana a cipher for decline and wasted opportunities. This chapter will reexamine the central role that Eliška Krásnohorská played in the creative world of Czech opera in the period 1867–84, balancing her iconic work on Smetana’s Hubička, Tajemství, and Čertova stěna with her librettos for lesser-known composers, Karel Bendl and Hynek Palla. In so doing, I will chart the maturation of her musico-dramatic ideas through the lens of her intellectual development and social engagement. Crucially, I conclude that the historiographical marginalisation of Krásnohorská in Czech opera history primarily reflects the anxieties of male critics of her own day—most notably August Wihelm Ambros and Otakar Hostinský—and their frustrated insecurities over the identity of Czech opera itself.
