Zvuky Prahy / Sounds of Prague

Gabriela Preissová aka Matylda Dumontova (1862 in Kutná Hora - 1946 in Prague) was a Czech writer and playwright. Preissova mostly wrote of optimism and the joy of life of rural life. Her stories first appeared in the early 1890s. Her books, written in the 1920s, were about the tragic rural life of the Kaerntner (Austria) Slavs, usually with a strong woman as a heroine. Some stories were set to music, such as Eva by Josef Bohuslav Foerster and her play Její pastorkyňa was the basis for the opera Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček, as well as a film by Miroslav Cikán. In the archive recording she is describing her visit to Nitra in 1917. (from the radio archive).