This video is called Jaroslav Hasek – The Good Soldier Schweik.
From Art for a change blog in the USA:
A rare presentation of Robert Kurka’s opera, The Good Soldier Schweik, was offered to audiences in Southern California by the Long Beach Opera at the Center Theater in Long Beach on Jan. 23, 2010, and at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica on Jan. 30, 2010. Based on the 1923 antiwar novel by Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, the opera is scarcely known in the United States and has been infrequently performed since it first premiered in 1958.
I attended the performance in Santa Monica, California and offer this article as a review, but I also wish to familiarize readers with the history of the Schweik tale since it was first published eighty-seven-years ago.
The confluence of talents, historic events, and political lessons embodied in Schweik is nothing less than astounding. While Hašek’s story took place during the First World War – “the War to end all Wars” – the work has continued to resonate throughout the decades. It is especially pertinent now that President Obama is fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Opposition tops election polls
Czech Republic: The opposition Social Democrats topped the polls in the first round of elections for parliament’s upper house this weekend and made gains in local elections as voters punished the right-wing government for its cuts programme.
No candidate in the race for 27 seats in the 81-seat senate reached the 50 per cent threshold to win outright.
But the Social Democratic Party, which wants to scrap a planned 10 per cent reduction in public-sector pay and withdraw Czech troops from Afghanistan, was first or second in 22 districts contested, giving the party a good chance of gaining a majority in Parliament.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/96489
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