The first few years of the Czechoslovak Republic were somewhat paradoxical regarding music composed by members of its own community and the issues surrounding the production of this music. On the one hand, as we have seen in chapter 5, much of the critical debate focused on the role of these composers' tradition-based fin-de-siècle modernism amid an increasingly present European avant-garde. Much of what was performed by the Czech Philharmonic and National Theater, however, consisted of the larger works of older Czech composers, written during the years of the First World War, at a time when fewer concert opportunities and performance forces had been available. As such, while ideologues (mostly younger composers of the wartime generation who had yet to write anything substantial themselves) debated about how to adapt to future directions of musical style, audiences were made to catch up on the recent past. Notably, this music was often presented as though it were avant-garde modernism, and critics, particularly those representing the conservative middle class, reacted accordingly. The result was an artificial environment designed to alienate mainstream audiences even when it was not especially warranted, since much more radical experiments were happening in almost every country of Europe. The sole exception, of course, is Janáček, most of whose operas gained favor with the Prague community upon their premieres under Ostrçil at the National Theater in the 1920s.