The Bartered Bride the plot [...] is taken from village life and demands a national treatment." According to his biographer John Clapham, Smetana "certainly felt the pulse of the peasantry and knew how to express this in music, yet inevitably he added something of himself." Historian Harold Schonberg argues that "the exoticisms of the Bohemian musical language were not in the Western musical consciousness until Smetana appeared." Smetana's musical language is, on the whole, one of happiness, expressing joy, dancing and festivals. The mood of the entire opera is set by the overture, a concert piece in its own right, which Tyrrell describes
Bless the Bride Bless the Bride Bless the Bride is a musical with music by Vivian Ellis and a book and lyrics by A. P. Herbert, the third of five musicals they wrote together. The story is about an English girl who elopes with a debonair French actor; he goes off to serve in the Franco-Prussian War, and his friend, who bears a grudge against the English, tells his bride that he has been killed in action. The musical is remembered as Ellis's best work and for the recordings of "This is my lovely day" and "I was never kissed before", with Lizbeth