This study presents a history and analysis of the Prague musical community from 1900 until the end of democracy in 1938. Opera and Ideology in Prague not only narrates the fascinating history of a local musical community but also reveals much about music and culture in Europe.
The fin-de-siècle period was dominated by the musicologist Zdenek Nejedly's polemics regarding the competing "legacies" of Smetana and Dvorák and the merits of modernism. After Czech independence in 1918, a new generation of musicians accepted modernist foreign influences only with extreme hesitation.
The 1926 Prague première of Berg's opera Wozzeck and the ascendancy of a young group of avant-garde composers changed the cultural climate entirely, providing new ground for the exploration of jazz, neo-classicism, quarter tones, and socialist music. As the Czechoslovak Republic drew to a close, a resurgence of nationalism appeared in the musical expressions of both Czechs and German-Bohemians.
The analyses of operas and tone poems by Novák, Ostrcil, Zich, Jeremiás, Hába, Kricka, and Suk provide a cross-section of musical life in early twentieth-century Prague, as well as a series of interpretations of Czech cultural identity. Populist endeavors such as jazz and neo-classicism represented some of the ways in which composers of the 1930s attempted to regain an audience alienated by modernism: in this respect, the trends in Prague mirrored those of the rest of Europe.

Brian Locke is assistant professor of music history at Western Illinois University [in Macomb]. He has written extensively on twentieth-century music, including Czech operatic and symphonic works and Alban Berg's Wozzeck.