Alfred

The world premiere recording of Antonín Dvorak's three-act opera Alfred is a monumental event of great scholarly interest for experts and the general public alike. This Wagnerian-style 1870 opera was performed and recorded for the first time as written (i.e. in the German language) in Prague's premiere venue: the Dvorak Hall at the Rudolfínum. A team of leading Dvorak scholars prepared the critical edition of the score and materials. The live recording features premiere Wagnerian singers, as well as the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic Choir, and conductor Heiko Mathias Forster. The libretto, set somewhere in England in the year 878, during the war between the English and the Danes, marked the sole occasion upon which Dvorak wrote music to a German libretto (by German poet Karl Theodor Korner (1791-1813).