Ondřej Havelka
Television, film and stage actor, documentary filmmaker and theatre director, scriptwriter, singer, tap dancer, swing music and golf aficionado Ondřej Havelka was born in Prague on October 10, 1954, the son of composer Svatopluk Havelka and actress Libuše Havelková. After completing studies of acting at Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts (1978), he later furthered his education in the course of stage direction at the Janáček Academy in Brno (1988). He followed his Prague Academy studies by six years of work with the Studio Ypsilon theatre in Prague, and soon asserted himself as both a film and television actor. After Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution,” he extended his scope to television scriptwriting and direction. His long list of projects in that field includes the tv documentary, Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená (script and direction, 1995), and the feature-length screen portrait of actor Vlastimil Brodský, Zdravý nemocný vlastimilený Brodský (script and direction, 1999). Last year he directed a new documentary again devoted to Magdalena Kožená. Since his student years he has devoted part of his time to performing jazz and popular music of the 1920s and 30s, as singer, and tap and platform dancer with the Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra. Working with the same band, he wrote and co-directed a musical documentary which was awarded the Silver Rose at the 1991 Montreux Television Festival. As scriptwriter, director, and in most cases also performer, he produced eighteen music clips, of which Děkuji, bylo to krásné won the 1995 Czech Grammy award in the Clip of the Year category, and Jingle Bells was bought and aired by MTV Latin. In 1995 he formed his own swing big band, the Melody Makers, with which he has since performed, and for which he has written and directed an impressive roster of platform concert shows, including A Tribute to George Gershwin (1998), Just for This Single Day (1999), The Story of Jazz (2000), Memories of Stardust (2001), Blues in My Heart (2002), Sweet and Burning (Dedicated to Bing Crosby) (2003), Echoes of Overseas Songs (2004), Ondřej Havelka and His Melody Makers in a Programme of Songs by Jaroslav Ježek and the Voskovec and Werich Duo (2005), and Something Old again and yet a Brand New Thing (2007). In 1996 the Czech Grammy Academy named him Jazzman of the Year.
Since 1988 he has also engaged in stage direction. There, he has to his credit productions of the musicals, La Caffeteria (Carlo Goldoni, Adolf Hoffmeister, Jaroslav Ježek, Studio Ypsilon theatre company, Prague, 1988); Tenhleten Manhattan (Martin Vačkář, based on Woody Allen’s short stories, Reduta Theatre, Prague, 1990); My Fair Josephine (Martin Vačkář, after the play by Vladislav Vančura, Karlín Musical Theatre, Prague, 1993); and the song-play, Men Off-side (Karel Poláček, Martin Vačkář, Municipal Theatre, Mladá Boleslav, 2007).
Ondřej Havelka made his debut as an opera director with a production of the opera by Martin Smolka and Jaroslav Dušek, Nagano: Ice Hockey in Opera (National Theatre, Prague, 2004), followed by Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (Janáček Opera, National Theatre, Brno, 2006), a ballet show based on Karel Jaromír Erben’s fairy-tale, Goldilocks, with music by Vladimír Franz (National Theatre, Prague, 2006), and a double bill of Puccini’s one-acter, Gianni Schicchi, and Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci (Janáček Opera, National Theatre, Brno, 2008).
Recently Havelka´s direction of Strauss´ Die Fledermaus and Puccini´s Bohema, performed at the State Opera Prague, have captured, as well as Offenbach´s Les contes d´Hoffmann, premiered in March 2010 at the National Theatre Prague.