Jan Ondráček

Biography

The tenor Jan Ondráček was born into a Czech-German family. He debuted at the National Theatre in Prague in 1999 as the Ringmaster in The Bartered Bride. This performance was followed only a year later by his second debut, this time at the State Opera Prague. There he sang the role of Peter Quint in the Czech premiere of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw as well as close to two dozen other opera roles later on. He has performed at the North Bohemian Theatre in Ústí nad Labem in a variety of roles: Jeník in The Bartered Bride, Šťáhlav in Libuše, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, Young Sailor and the Shepherd in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Belmonte in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail. This particular performance earned him the first round nomination for the THÁLIE prize in 2016. His repertoire includes many staples of the operetta: Paris (J. Offenbach: La belle Hélène), Camille de Rosillon (F. Lehár: Die lustige Witwe), Edwin (E. Kálmán: Die Csárdásfürstin), and Adam (C. Zeller: Der Vogelhändler). He has appeared as a guest in Plzeň, České Budějovice, Liberec and Opava as Jeník, Vašek and the Ringmaster in The Bartered Bride, Steuermann in Der fliegende Holländer, Max in Der Freischütz or Don Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro. He has toured Japan several times with Czech opera ensembles. In 2012, he made a guest appearance at the Gerhart Hauptmann-Theater in Görlitz. He takes part in the educational performances “Opera nás baví” (We Enjoy Opera) and “Hurá do opery” (Let’s Go to the Opera). He has sung in several cantata productions: Our Father by Janáček in Switzerland and Stabat Mater by Dvořák in Germany. He can be also heard in the Czech Radio recording of the Jacopo Peri opera Euridice. His other recordings include the solo part in Britten’s opera for children, The Little Sweep, done in cooperation with the Children’s Opera Prague. Besides his career as a singer, he also provides language and phonetics coaching in German with emphasis on operatic singing. He has prepared the handbook, German for Operatic Singers, for the Publishing House of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

Photo: Peter Paleček