Musical
News
Brno City Theatre announces auditions for Addams Family musical
The Brno City Theatre (MdB) is holding an audition to complete the ensemble (offer of engagement) and to perform the main roles and company of the musical The Addams Family. more
Norrköping 2023: meeting of UNESCO cities of music
The annual meeting of UNESCO Cities of Music is currently taking place in Norrköping, Sweden. The host city is the cultural capital of the Östergötland region, 130 kilometres south of Stockholm. Like Brno, Norrköping has been a UNESCO Creative Cities Network City of Music since 2017. more
For the fourteenth year now, the space under the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul comes alive with productions from the Brno Municipal Theatre (MdB). This year, the MdB will start its summer performances at the beginning of June and will stage a total of 29 performances of seven different titles in the Bishop’s Court. The traditional summer stage will open with the world premiere of the original production Crocodile from Svratka or Mozart in Brno by Stanislav Slovák, Jan Šotkovský, and Petr Štěpán. more
Conductor Caspar Richter passed away
German conductor Caspar Richter died on Thursday 2 February 2023 at the age of 78. During his career he worked closely with the Brno City Theatre and was at the beginning of its Music Stage. He was also a guest conductor at the Brno Philharmonic. more
Update: Nominations for the Thalia Awards 2022 also come to Brno
The Actors’ Association published the nominations for the Thalia Awards 2022 today. Several of them were awarded to actors and singers from Brno theatres. more
Brno Municipal Theatre prepares the premiere of the musical Nine Crosses
The musical Nine Crosses was written especially for the Brno Municipal Theatre. The story tells an old Moravian legend about a tragic act that took place in a small village near Velká Bíteš. The music for the musical was composed by Brno composer Robin Schenk while the script was written by Petr Štěpán and Miroslav Ondra. The world premiere of the new musical will be brought to the stage by director Petr Gazdík. more
Brno Marathon of Music will fill the streets of the city with music for the seventh time this year
The multi-genre festival will offer dozens of concerts in the center of Brno in mid-August. The music will be played in squares, streets, and concert halls. New to the program this year is the post of artist-in-residence; the phenomenal multi-instrumentalist Anna Fusek will take on this role for the first time. The festival will also present Kateřina Šedá’s popular busker rooms, this year expanded to include Johann Gregor Mendel’s greenhouse. more
May Newsletter of the Culture Department of the Brno City Municipality
The culture newsletter details what’s on in Brno, the latest news and opportunities in culture. more
Brno Music Marathon Festival is happening in the middle of this August
As the designated UNESCO City of Music, Brno is all set to be filled with harmonious sounds of music once again. Hundreds of musicians will perform in the city over the four days of the festival, with dozens of concerts scheduled that shall make the squares, streets and concert halls resound with music. Encompassing a variety of genres, this year’s Brno Music Marathon will take place in mid-August, just like before, and it’s going to be one of the few public events to happen this year. The line-up includes Lenka Dusilová, Juwana Jenkins, Sisa Feher, Fanfara Transilvania, Malalata, Circus Brothers, Horňácká cimbálová muzika Petra Mičky (the Horňácko Cimbalom Band of Petr Mička), Javory and a host of others. Street “rooms” by Kateřina Šedá is not absent from it, either. more
Zdenek Merta – a composer, producer, pianist and singer – has a new CD out on the occasion of his 70th birthday entitled Zdenek Merta u klavíru (Zdenek Merta at the Piano), which reviews his career to date. Guest artists on the recordings include musician Ondřej Pivec, the concert master of the Czech Philharmonic Jiří Vodička, oboist Vilém Veverka and singer & actor Vojtěch Dyk. more
Feature articles
Charlotte Brontë’s famous novel Jane Eyre has inspired many artists. The extraordinary prose is one of the highlights of Romantic literature. Its importance is also evidenced by over thirty film, television and musical adaptations. The Brno City Theatre (BCT) staged a musical adaptation of it this weekend as the Czech premiere. The production directed by Petr Gazdík is a strong and impressive piece of musical theatre that impresses with its musical staging, singing and acting performances, as well as costume, scenography and movement. more
Yesterday, Visitors to the Brno City Theatre experienced the Czech premiere of the Broadway musical hit Pretty Woman. Directed by Stanislav Moša, this theatrical adaptation of the famous blockbuster highlighted the strengths of the movie. Until the break, the viewer is mostly laughing royally and having fun in this tale of a modern Cinderella, and then in the second half the impressiveness and lyricism of the whole title is especially pronounced. more
Operetta is a wilful child that stopped obeying its parents and ran away from the opera house. Its origin is much more explicable when one considers France, where operetta emerged in the midnineteenth century as an entertaining and often very sarcastic polar opposite to the megalomaniacal productions of “grand opera”. In Brno, as was the case everywhere else in the world, operetta appealed to the broad public, offering both social satire as well as quite conventional entertainment. In the interwar period, thanks to the enlightened lead of Oldřich Nový, it took on a sophisticated polish. Later the Brno theatre scholar Ivo Osolsobě was able to give it a solid theoretical basis, and so move on from the stultified operetta to the lively musical. Today Brno boasts not only a theatre built specifically for musicals but a degree programme in Musical Acting at JAMU. Through the musical A Ballad for a Bandit the brigand Nikola Šuhaj set off from Brno into the world of theatre and film, while Brno’s Liza Doolittle made her living as My Fair Lady of Zelný trh, Brno’s ancient market square. And so we’ve come full circle: the square is the site of the Reduta theatre, operetta’s home in times past. more
To write a guide to music in Brno in the past and present means digging deep into one’s own recollections and those of others as well as into sources with varying degrees of reliability, and as far as possible not believing anything automatically but always asking “Did this really happen just like that?” And in doing so, to be very, very suspicious of one’s own memory. Two basic questions that cropped up in connection with almost every sentence were “What is it about this band or that event that makes them special? Would someone who’s never been to Brno and has no ties with the city find it interesting?” more
Due to the impact of extraordinary measures taken because of the Covid-19 pandemic on stakeholders of the cultural and creative industries in Brno, Brno leaders and the Department of Culture of the Brno City Municipality are working intensively on a set of precautions for minimizing the damages. At the same time, communication is conducted on all levels of public administration, predominantly in collaboration with the Institut umění – Divadelní ústav [Arts and Theatre Institute], which is mapping the situation on the nationwide level. Until 22 March 2020 you can help assess the current situation by means of an online survey (the link is provided below). Further steps will be taken according to the results of the survey. more
A fateful comedy, the third part of a musical trilogy or a fantasy musical. These attributes define Paradise, a new authorial piece from the workshop of Zdenek Merta and Stanislav Moša. Their ninth joint work in the field of music theatre was premiered yesterday on the big stage of the Brno City Theatre. The result is embarrassing. more
On the last day of May, the Dominikánské Square in Brno came to life with music, singing and dancing. At half past two in the afternoon, the programme of the nationwide happening of primary artistic schools ZUŠ started under the patronage of the Magdalena Kožená Endowment Fund by announcing the results of the "TO JE talent"competition. The participants did not only come to pick up with prizes. Several of the award-winning singers and musicians proved this. For example, Lucie Sedláčková with the song by Ewa Farná Měls mě vůbec rád [Did You Love Me At All?] attracted an ever growing crowd of listeners, while singer and pianist Veronika Vávrová did the same with the ballad Million Reasons by Lady Gaga. more
The musical Nine, based on the legendary film 8½ by director Frederico Fellini, was prepared under director Stanislav Moša as the penultimate premiere of the season at the Brno City Theatre. They prepared an at places almost erotic show, led by interesting scenography, well-made costumes, brilliant musical preparation and the energy of the female acting. The sensuality of some of the dance parts thankfully did not overshadow the central theme of the hero’s crises: mid-life, art and relationship. more
Yesterday Brno City Theatre gave the European premiere of the musical The Last Ship, written by the world-famous musician Sting. It is a mixture of his wonderful music drawn from British folk, a successfully and honestly told tale and also a strong acting performance, which should guarantee the production’s successful voyage to the audience. more
Brno City Theatre has come out with another premiere of a Czech musical in the form of Big. This musical novelty, taken from the film of the same name, will entertain children, adolescents and their parents. This musical tale is truly for all the generations. Big is a family comedy, in places also a fantasy spectacle, in others a romantic sweet piece about love or an exciting story of an impatient little boy, in which however all ends well. more