Bedřich Smetana the principal exponent of Czech national music. This status was celebrated by several events during Smetana's final years. On 4 January 1880, a special concert in Prague marked the 50th anniversary of his first public performance; Smetana attended, and played his Piano Trio in G minor from 1855. In May 1882 "The Bartered Bride" was given its 100th performance, an unprecedented event in the history of Czech opera. It was so popular that a repeat "100th performance" was staged. A gala concert and banquet was arranged to honour Smetana's 60th birthday in March 1884, but he was too ill to
A Bride from the Bush Raffles. When he published the novel "Peccavi" in 1900, a critic from "The Advertiser" wrote a scathing review, writing that Hornung should go back to Australia so he would be inspired to write something as good as "A Bride from the Bush" again. Upon Hornung's death, a tribute in "The Freeman's Journal" called "A Bride from the Bush" "the best and the best known" of Hornung's Australia-related stories. In 1924 André Cœuroy and Theodore Baker argued in "The Musical Quarterly" that Hornung's characterisation of the novel's hero as being pitiable for being unable to appreciate anthems demonstrates that "A Bride