• Žofín Academy: participating institution, vv

News that the Žofín Academy was to give a musical entertainment for its members was published by Bohemia 26/11/1850. This reported the date, time and venue of the event and gave limited details of the programme including the participating soloists. The programme listing noted the Czech works in the vernacular and in a Latin typeface, while the German-language compositions were rendered in the usual fraktur. The Tagesanzieger texts of Bohemia 26/11/1850 and 28/11/1850 specified the date, time and venue of this event.

Prager Zeitung 28/11/1850 also published news, dated 27th November, of this forthcoming event. The text simply reported that ‘Tomorrow 28th Nov. will give a musical entertainment in the Hall of Žofín Island at 5pm’. Brief details of the programme, identical with the earlier Bohemia report, were then listed.

An unsigned review of the entertainment was published by Prager Zeitung 30/11/1850. Although this text referred to the event as having taken place ‘yesterday’, the newspaper often carried reports that were written the previous day and not published until a day later. Thus the description ‘yesterday’ does not necessarily indicate that the date of the performance was 29th November and not the 28th as noted by the previous sources. The correspondent wrote that ‘it gladdens us to be able to report that the performance of all the proffered pieces was greatly satisfactory’, particularly given that the pupils had only been receiving tuition at the Academy for a few weeks [i.e. since the start of the school’s year in October], and that some of the work could not be considered as easy to perform, for example the fugue by Caldara. The appreciation of the numerous audience was evident in that ‘almost all’ of the pieces had to be repeated. Particularly noteworthy to the correspondent was the excellent performance of the approximately 10-year old Jaroslav Hofrichter, who sang two songs by Gumbert and Netzer. These were encored twice. The text concluded by wishing the director and teachers of the institute continued excellent progress, and noted that on the evidence of this entertainment the Academy would surmount all obstacles.