Nikotina is, you might expect, the goddess of tobacco, and indeed, in Novak's ballet-pantomime, she is the vision of an enticing girl emerging from the snuff-box of an old monk who falls asleep by the roadside after taking a hefty pinch. The idea is really no more than the prompt to a series of fantastic episodes that would allow for some amusing and weird stage devices set to music that is at its best bewitching and never falls below the level of amiability. By this stage in his career—he was nearing 60 Novak was a craftsman of expert assurance and the master of a number of styles, so there are some deft touches of parody in the score as well as music that trips along elegantly and tunefully. The idea for the whole entertainment came from Svatopluk Cech, whose Novellen provided the material for Janacek's Mr Broucek and his excursions, and there is something, one can see, of a comparable delight in the ludicrous, the puncturing and the not quite outrageous.
Novak was not a composer of Janacek's sharpness, but this is a pleasant and very well-made score that can be very easily enjoyed. The playing of the Brno State Philharmonic is suitably light and dexterous under Jilek, and the recording is clear and bright without being sensational.'