The Bartered Bride followed by an unstressed one), matching the natural first-syllable emphasis in the Czech language. By October 1862, well before the arrival of any libretto or plot sketch, Smetana had noted down 16 bars which later became the theme of "The Bartered Bride's" opening chorus. In May 1863 he sketched eight bars which he eventually used in the love duet "Faithful love can't be marred", and later that summer, while still awaiting Sabina's revised libretto, he wrote the theme of the comic number "We'll make a pretty little thing". He also produced a piano version of the entire overture, which was
The Tsar's Bride (opera) The Tsar's Bride (opera) The Tsar's Bride (, "Tsarskaya nevesta") is an opera in four acts by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer's tenth opera. The libretto, by Ilia Tyumenev, is based on the drama of the same name by Lev Mey. Mey's play was first suggested to the composer as an opera subject in 1868 by Mily Balakirev. (Alexander Borodin, too, once toyed with the idea.) However, the opera was not composed until thirty years later, in 1898. The first performance of the opera took place in 1899 at the Moscow theater of the Private Opera of S.I. Mamontov. Rimsky-Korsakov himself