The issue of Frantisek Jilek's 1982 version of Mr Broucek on CD is a great pleasure. For many years the work was thought not to 'travel', to be too much of a local comedy and enjoyable only in its homeland or by Janacek enthusiasts. But Janacek is now accepted as a composer whose art transcends frontiers, and in any case, Czechoslovakia is no longer Neville Chamberlain's 'far-off country'. Broucek is a genuinely amusing work, and a touching and most original one. It needs a conductor who can capture Janacek's capacity to respond to some minor incident with music of sharpness or satire or a moment of ravishing lyricism. One of the most beautiful little scenas comes when Kunka recalls the sermon she has just heard preached by Jan z Rokycan, tenderly sung here by Jana Jonasova, who nicely differentiates between this role, the pretty Malinka and the ludicrous Etherea. Another is the mysterious appearance of the author of the book on which the opera is based, Svatopluk Cech, with his harangue to modern Czechs on the need for dedication, this is strongly declaimed by Rene Tucek. It is an opera of many small roles, and all are well characterized here, sometimes several times over: the record is held by Vladimir Krejcik, who takes no fewer than seven parts.
Vilem Pribyl, in splendid voice, plays Broucek with amusement and sympathy, and though he deploys his full warmth of tone, he restrains himself from the heroic declamation that would be very out of character for this anti-hero. The recording sounds well in almost all the detail, and Jilek handles the score with great affection and liveliness. There is an important improvement in the presentation. Back in 1982, it was still thought necessary to produce a kind of half censorship, in that the cast sang the correct text but the religious discussions were edited out of the booklet translation. Now, a new and fluent English translation by Ivan Vomacka includes all the references to Bede and Augustine and the Hussites without which a good deal of the atmosphere and indeed the point is lost. He has the wit to translate the slangily used Czech word for a ram as ''some bloody Protestant'', without which it would not be clear why Vacek and Vojta fall angrily upon Broucek.
The Keilberth set is what might be called special interest only. This is a recording of the first German performance of the work in 1959 and while it is good to hear Wilma Lipp, Kurt Boehme and the lamented Fritz Wunderlich (a delightful Mazal), there is too much to overcome. Neither text nor translation is provided, perhaps because the German version by Karlheinz Gutheim does not really lie very close to some important elements in the work, or even always to the original vocal lines. It is odd enough, for instance, to hear Broucek mocked by the very German gibe ''alte Spiesser'', but still more so to find the poet Mazal turned into a space scientist, even if Broucek does fly to the moon: here Cech's aesthetes now sing the praises of technology. Keilberth conducts warmly, but the Czech spirit is lacking. Mr Broucek may 'travel' in all sorts of directions, but not, for an English listener, this one.'