The Kiss is an opera in two acts, with music by Bedřich Smetana and text by Eliška Krásnohorská, based on a novel by Karolina Světlá. It received its first performance at the Provisional Theatre in Prague on 7 November 1876.
The composer before 1880
Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style that became closely identified with his people's aspirations to a cultural and political "revival". He has been regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his 1866 opera The Bartered Bride and for the symphonic cycle Má vlast, which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native Bohemia. It contains the famous symphonic poem "Vltava", also popularly known by its German name "Die Moldau".
František Smetana by Antonín Machek (1832)
Oil portrait of Smetana by Geskel Saloman (1854)
Gothenburg, Sweden, Smetana's base between 1856 and 1861
Prague Conservatoire (modern photograph): Smetana's bid to become its director failed.