On our 6th evening, our Vivaldi show graduates with two modern world premieres. The programme, which will take place under the majestic octagon of the Church of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary in Břeclav-Poštorná, will present Antonio Vivaldi in the “competition” of his Italian contemporaries and the disciple František Jiránek, whose Concerto in C major for Oboe, Strings and Basso Continuo adapted for flute traverso will be performed in a modern world premiere. Another highlight of this programme will be Vivaldi’s aria Eja voce sonora læti cantate RV Anh 59.29, which was discovered in 2020 by Eduardo García Salas, the Spanish violinist, musicologist and programming director of this year’s festival, in the Czech archives. The solo parts will be performed by the festival well-known soprano Patricia Janečková, accompanied by the excellent Czech Baroque ensemble Collegium Marianum and its artistic director Jana Semerádová, which will also demonstrate her internationally acclaimed art of playing the baroque traverso.

Patricia
Janečková

She performed with the orchestra for the first time at the age of ten and made her solo debut on theatres in thirteen in 2011 in Britten’s The Little Sweep (Annie). This German-born Slovak soprano, currently living in Ostrava, got labelled as prodigy while entering the public consciousness in 2010 after an absolute victory in the Czech-Slovak television competition Talentmania. After all, many still remember her performance of the main melody from Ennio Morricone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West. Since then, under the mentorship of Eva Dřízgová-Jirušová, she has grown into a singer who has given concerts in Austria, Germany, Portugal, France and at a number of international music festivals in the Czech Republic and collaborated with personalities such as Adam Plachetka or Peter Dvorský. In 2015, she made her debut in Mozart roles at the State Theater Košice and at the Slovak National Theater in Bratislava. She performs with the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, The Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Camerata Janáček and National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, with which she has been artistically bounded for a long time. She first performed with Collegium Marianum in 2017, when she performed at Handel’s opera Acis et Galatea. The fact that the interpretation of early music really suits her voice proves the fact that she is the absolute winner of the Concorso Internazionale “Musica Sacra” International singing competition in Rome from 2016. Because of that, she was able to attend the master class by Teatro alla Scala soloist Renato Bruson. Currently, she studies at the Department of Vocal Studies of the University of Ostrava under the mentorship of Eva Dřízgová-Jirušová. She will perform for the third time at our festival, where she was delegated the soprano part in the modern world premiere of Vivaldi’s aria Eja voce sonora læti cantate.
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Jana
Semerádová

The artistic life of Jana Semerádová is primarily connected with the ensemble Collegium Marianum, behind whose unusual programming lie Semerádová’s research activities in the field of baroque gestures, declamation and contemporary dance. However, she also collaborates with the other top European old music ensembles, such as Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Il Giardino Armonico or Il suonar parlante. She is also a sought-after chamber musician, performing in the projects of Magdalena Kožená, Sergio Azzolini, Alfred Bernardini and many other representatives of the so-called “early music”. She is a graduate of the Prague Conservatory, the Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University (Theory and Practice of Early Music), and the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, the Netherlands, and she received her habilitation degree as an associate professor of flute from the Faculty of Music and Dance at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Její sólové nahrávky najdeme rovněž na labelu Supraphon. She is a programming director of the concert cycle Baroque Soirées and the international music festival Summer Festivities of Early Music, as well as the member of the Art Council of the Prague Spring International Music Festival.
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Collegium Marianum

Collegium Marianum with its artistic director Jana Semerádová is one of the pioneers of the early music performing in our country and one of the most important promoters of Czech music of the 17th and 18th centuries, for which it was awarded with the International Music Council by UNESCO in 2010. The ensemble focuses not only on the concert works, but also on the stage works. This is the reason why the ensemble is behind many great projects in collaboration with top European soloists, directors, conductors and choreographers (Andrew Parrott, Simona Houda-Šaturová, Peter Kooij and others). An example of the ensemble’s originality is the collaboration with the theatre ensemble Buchty a loutky, with which he performed the puppet opera Calisto and the charming production of Handel’s pastoral opera Acis et Galatea. Collegium Marianum regularly performs at prestigious European music festivals: Oude Muziek (Utrecht), Tage Alter Musik (Regensburg), Bachfest (Leipzig), Festival de Sablé (France), Pražské jaro (The Prague Spring, Czech Republic) and others. Since 2008, the ensemble collaborates with the Supraphon label, with which it has recorded eight compact discs so far with the music by František Jiránek, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Josef Antonín Sehling and other Czech authors as a part of the edition Hudba Prahy 18. století (“The Music of the Prague of the 18th Century”).
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