Vilém Blodek made up of a handful of closed numbers: five solos, two duets, one quartet, an overture and an intermezzo, and three brief ensembles for chorus and soloists. It was the first Czech comic opera to replace spoken dialogue with recitative. Blodek’s opera is often considered to be one of the most ‘Czech’ operas after those of Smetana – it was written shortly after the première of The Bartered Bride. Blodek’s next opera, "Zítek", again to a Sabina libretto (a historical comedy set in the 14th century), was a more ambitious work both in its musical vocabulary and in its operatic
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