The Bartered Bride to the Offenbach genre. Smetana was hurt by this remark, which he felt downgraded his opera to operetta status, and was convinced that press hostility had been generated by a former adversary, the Russian composer Mily Balakirev. The pair had clashed some years earlier, over the Provisional Theatre's stagings of Glinka's "A Life for the Tsar" and "Ruslan and Lyudmila". Smetana believed that Balakirev had used the Russian premiere of "The Bartered Bride" as a means of exacting revenge. "The Bartered Bride" was not performed abroad again until after Smetana's death in 1884. It was staged by the Prague National
The Bartered Bride identity revelation it emerges that Jeník is Mícha's elder son, by a former marriage – the "worthless good-for-nothing" earlier dismissed by Kecal – who had in fact been driven away by his jealous stepmother, Háta. As Mícha's son he is, by the terms of the contract, entitled to marry Mařenka; when this becomes clear, Mařenka understands his actions and embraces him. Offstage shouting interrupts the proceedings; it seems that a bear has escaped from the circus and is heading for the village. This creature appears, but is soon revealed to be Vašek in the bear's costume ("Don't be afraid!"). His