Opera
Don Giovanni
Don Ottavio
The Estates Theatre
Biography
Richard Samek is a regular guest of the National Theatre and the State Opera. He made his debut on the stage of the Prague State Opera in 2006 as the Governor in Bernstein's Candide and made his first appearance in the historic building of the National Theatre in 2008 as Dr. Cajus in Verdi's Falstaff.
He graduated in opera singing from the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. He began his singing career at the National Theatre in Brno. During his engagement at the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen he sang, for example, the Duke (Verdi: Rigoletto), Nemorino (Donizetti: L’elisir d‘amore), Raimondo (Tchaikovsky: The Maid of Orleans) and Max (Weber: Der Freischütz). He has made guest appearances at the F. X. Šalda Theatre in Liberec and the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava. At the State Opera Prague he has performed Rodolfo (Puccini: La bohème), Edmondo (Puccini: Manon Lescaut), Verdi’s Cassio (Otello), Ismaele (Nabucco), and Alfredo (La traviata), Donizetti’s Arturo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Dvořák’s Prince (Rusalka), and at the National Theatre Jirka (Dvořák: The Devil and Kate); , Smetana’s Ladislav Podhajský (The Two Widows), Jeník (The Bartered Bride), and Šťáhlav (Libuše), as well as Mr. Josef (The Carousel), the Mozart roles of Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), as well as Massenet's Werther. At the Grand Théâtre in Reims, the Opéra Théâtre in Limoges and the Opéra in Rennes, he sang Števa in Janáček's Jenůfa. He has also appeared as a guest at the Staatsoperette in Dresden, at the Theater Magdeburg as Don Manuel in the German premiere of Fibich's The Bride of Messina and as Faust in Gounod's opera of the same name, at the Aalto-Musiktheater Essen and at the Semperoper in Dresden as Jeník in Smetana's The Bartered Bride. As the Prince in Dvořák's Rusalka and Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème he appeared at the Staatsoper Hannover. At London's Barbican Hall, accompanied by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he performed the title role of Smetana's Dalibor in a concert performance. He regularly performs at major international music festivals, including the Dvořák Prague International Music Festival, the Leoš Janáček International Music Festival, the Moravian Autumn, the Prague Spring International Music Festival, the Seefestspiele Mörbisch, Smetana’s Litomyšl National Festival, and the St. Wenceslas Music Festival. He has also performed Antonín Dvořák’s cantata The Spectred Bride in concert with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra in Budapest. In 2017, he recorded Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde for Supraphon. He is the laureate of the International A. Dvořák Vocal Competition and the M. S. Trnavský Vocal Competition.
www.richardsamek.cz
Photo: Irena Štěrbová, DJKT
