This study presents a history and analysis of the Prague musical community from 1900 until the end of democracy in 1938. Opera and Ideology in Prague not only narrates the fascinating history of a local musical community but also reveals much about music and culture in Europe. The fin-de-siecle period was dominated by the musicologist Zdenek Nejedly's polemics regarding the competing -legacies- of Smetana and Dvorak and the merits of modernism. After Czech independence in 1918, a new generation of musicians accepted modernist foreign influences only with extreme hesitation. The 1926 Prague...