The unsettled relationship between the Austrian Empire and France would help to ensure that the Italian influence remained stronger than the French in the second half of the seventeenth century. Italian music had dominated courtly life in the Czech lands long before the Thirty Years War. Furthermore, many of the stylistic traits associated with the Italian style by the early eighteenth century had long been central features of Czech music. The anapaestic and syncope rhythmic patterns, the use of parallel keys and the new emphasis on melody often at the expense of a contrapuntal bass have come to be closely associated with the Italian style, but all of them were common occurrences in Czech music long before their more conspicuous appearance in the music of Vivaldi and his contemporaries. Vivaldi's connections to Prague were via two main fascinating personalities—through Count Morzin (to compose instrumental music) and Count Sporck's theatre (for opera). Vivaldi had arrived in Prague by the spring of 1730, if not earlier, for a revival of his popular opera Il Farnace. His greatest era of influence in Bohemia, however, was through his concertos—though closer examination suggests that the influence was not entirely one way.