Jiří Hájek

Biography

The baritone Jiří Hájek made his debut at the National Theatre in Prague on 28 August 2003 in the role of L'Officier du port (Philip Glass: La belle et la Bête). Since 2008, he has been a National Theatre Opera soloist. From 2003, he was a permanent guest of the State Opera Prague, where he debuted on 16 March 2003 as Visconte Paolo (Leoncavallo: La bohème) and where he appeared in the Czech premieres of Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias (2007) and Britten’s Death in Venice (2009). In 2005, he performed opposite Agon Orchestra under the conductor Petr Kofroň in the first Czech production of Glass’s opera In the Penal Colony, premiered at the Archa Theatre. In 2004, he first worked with the stage director Jiří Heřman, portraying the role of the Son in Michal Nejtek’s scenic madrigal Lamenti, which was presented at a festival in Rio de Janeiro. In 2005, he performed as the Ferryman in the Czech premiere of Britten’s Curlew River, directed by Heřman and staged at the Czech Museum of Music in Prague. Furthermore, he portrayed Paul in Alice Nellis’s 2011 production of Glass’s Les enfants terrible, presented at the Psychiatric Hospital in Bohnice, Prague. Jiří Hájek has also appeared at the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň, the South Bohemia Theatre in České Budějovice, the Silesian Theatre in  Opava, the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, as well as at the National Theatre Brno, where his most recent roles include Přemysl (Smetana: Libuše) and Ned Keene (Britten: Peter Grimes). Jiří Hájek studied voice with Peter Mikuláš and René Tuček. In 2003, he received first prize in the song category and second prize in the opera category at the Antoník Dvořák International Vocal Competition in Karlovy Vary.