Mgr. Ondřej Hučín

Biography

Born in 1972, Ondřej Hučín studied theatrology at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. From 1992 to 1994 he worked as a dramaturgy lecturer in the drama section of the National Theatre in Prague, in 1995 and 1996 as assistant director of the record company Supraphon, and between 1996 and 2003 as theatre historian at the Cabinet for Study of Czech Theatre at Prague’s Theatre Institute. At that time, he also devoted to theatre reviewing (writing in, for example, the newspapers Divadelní noviny, Lidové noviny, the magazines Svět a divadlo, Divadlo v medzičase, Revolver revue, Yorick, etc.) and contributed to several books (Czech Theatres – An Encyclopaedia of Theatre Ensembles, Theatre in the Czech Lands Until the End of the 18th century; chapters dedicated to Czech theatre and drama in the 19th and 20th centuries in the book History of Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe; The Last Season?, Suede and Chromium). From 2001 to 2007 he worked as a dramaturg, stage director and assistant director in the opera company of the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň. Together with Petr Kofroň, the then artistic director of the opera company, he transformed the Plzeň Opera into a modern and alternative stage (productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata and Antonín Dvořák’s The Devil and Kate). As a dramaturg, he has collaborated with a number of stage directors, among them Jiří Heřman, Martin Čičvák, Jiří Pokorný and Daniel Balatka, whose productions have won great acclaim, with some of them receiving prestigious awards, for instance: The Bartered Bride (stage director: D. Balatka) – the Prize for the Best Production at the Opera 2003 festival; The Flying Dutchman (stage director: J. Heřman) – the Prize of Sazka and Divadelní noviny for the best stage direction. With the Plzeň Opera, he participated in two tours of Japan (2003 and 2005), within the first of which he presented to acclaim his own production of Verdi’s La traviata. His collaboration with the stage director Jiří Heřman also continued beyond the Plzeň Opera: in 2004 he co-created the production of Michal Nejtek and Francesco Micieli’s modern scenic composition Lamenti, one year later the staging of Benjamin Britten’s opera Curlew River, and in 2013 Hučín worked with Heřman on the scenic version of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, which was performed at the Barrandov film studios within the Strings of Autumn festival in Prague. In 2007-2011 Ondřej Hučín was the chief dramaturg of the National Theatre Opera. Since August 2013, he has been the chief dramaturg of the National Theatre Opera and the State Opera. In 2013, he and Prof. Martin Hilský gave lectures in Prague and Liberec on the Elizabethan era and its portrayal in Benjamin Britten’s oeuvre. Ondřej Hučín has written numerous essays about works by L. Janáček, B. Smetana, Z. Fibich, B. Martinů, J. Mysliveček, C. W. Gluck, R. Wagner, C. Orff, P. I. Tchaikovsky, I. Stravinsky, U. Giordano and other composers. He has also translated librettos into Czech from Russian, German and English (to operas by P. I. Tchaikovsky, M. P. Mussorgsky, I. Stravinsky, S. Prokofiev, C. Orff, R. Wagner, W. A. Mozart and B. Britten). He has conceived several exhibitions for the National Theatre in Prague (e.g. The New Land Case; Treasures of the National Theatre Music Archives; The Provisional Theatre – 150 years since its opening). Since 2013, he has been a regular member of the specialist jury at the Antonín Dvořák International Vocal Competition in Karlovy Vary.

 

Updated: December 2016