Pavel Vaněk

Chief Chorus Master of the National Theatre Chorus. In 1979 he graduated from Pilsen’s Conservatory, where he studied piano. Between 1986 and 1991 he studied conducting at Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts with František Vajnar. From 1982 to 1984 he worked as a repetiteur at the Theatre in Pilsen. Subsequently, he was engaged for a short time with the chorus of Czech Radio. In 1985 he began working as second chorus master of the Prague Male-Voice Choir of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. In 1989 he joined the National Theatre Opera as an assistant to the opera chorus, in 1992 he started to work here as second chorus master and since September 2000 he has been chief chorus master of the National Theatre. To date, he has prepared here some thirty productions, including Verdi’s Rigoletto, Macbeth, Aida and Falstaff, Bellini’s Norma, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Puccini’s Tosca and La fanciulla del West, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Bizet’s Carmen, Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni and Idomeneo, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, The Devil’s Wall and The Secret, Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr. Brouček and Jenůfa, Martinů’s The Greek Passion and The Miracles of Mary, Dvořák’s Rusalka and The Jacobin, Wagner’s Parsifal, Britten’s Gloriana, as well as Suchý and Šlitr’s jazz opera A Walk Worthwhile. As a chorus master, he has collaborated with leading music ensembles (Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Prague Male-Voice Choir, etc.). As a repetiteur, he participated in a number of concerts both at home and abroad with Opera soloists. Update: September 2012