Ero S Onoga Svijeta - History

History

Composition of the opera began on October 10, 1932 and progressed in three stages, being finished on May 8, 1935. The first performance was on November 2, 1935 at the Croatian National Theatre (Hrvatsko narodno kazalište) in Zagreb, and the opera has since become the most performed work of South Slavic music literature.

The first performance was conducted by Gotovac himself, and he felt that opera was nicely received by the audience. But, in Jutarnji list, a Croatian newspaper, Lujo Šafranek Kavić wrote that one Croatian composer wrote another opera in vain. Contrary to this, in Novosti Milan Katić described the opera in superlatives, and in Belgrade Pravda paper Stražičić shared the positive sentiment.

Ero the Joker saw its first performance outside Yugoslavia in Brno, Czechoslovakia, translated into Czech in 1936, and after that it came back to the National Theater (Narodno pozorište) in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on April 17, 1937. It was next put on stage more than ten years later, on February 27, 1948 in the Serbian National Theatre (Srpsko narodno pozorište) in Novi Sad where it was put on five times since. All totaled, Ero the Joker found its way to the stages of more than 80 world theaters, and was translated to 9 languages.

Gotovac and Begović found the basics for the opera's music and text in the folklore of many South Slavic groups, ranging from Dalmatian folklore (Opera Finale) to songs from Kosovo (opening chorus Duni mi, duni, lađane).