Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music

Opera by ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK, 1889, first performed in Prague. The action takes place in a small Bohemian town in 1793. Bogus, a young Bohemian, is denounced by his detractors as a radical "Jacobin." (During the French Revolution, the Jacobins were regarded as violent radicals.) Boguś is forced to leave Bohemia for several years, but virtue triumphs in the end, when the true traitors are revealed. The supposed radical returns home with his newly acquired French bride, and he inherits a rich estate.

The name of the dastardly persecutor in The Jakobin is Adolf. One line in the libretto, "Wherever brutality reigns, Adolf is there," was loudly applauded at performances during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, with an obvious reference to Hitler. The Nazi authorities ordered the name be changed to Rudolf, but that didn't help since Rudolf was the name of Hitler's henchman, Rudolf Hess. After several incidents, the opera was banned by the Nazis and not revived until the liberation of Czechoslovakia.

Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music | Jakobin, The