Prostějovský Michal

Lyricist, librettist, radio journalist and producer. In the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote 400 song lyrics for leading Czech performers (Lament of the Ferryman, Šípková Růženka, Pět ravenů, Řekněte, whence do I know you, Do re mi la, Podej mi ruku a projdem Václavák, Když písně lžou, Agáta). He worked at Supraphon, the largest Czechoslovak gramophone company at the time, as head of dramaturgy and production. He studied theatre and film studies with a focus on musical theatre, and after moving to Germany in the early 1980s, he had the opportunity to experience musical productions in that country as well as in London and New York. For eighteen years he worked as an editor for the German radio stations Deutschlandfunk and Deutsche Welle. Since the early 1990s he has been one of those who have been building the modern musical scene in Prague. He is primarily the author of the Czech librettos for the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (1994), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (2006), Evita (2009) and the musical Cats (2004), for which he rewrote the poems of the Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot. He wrote the lyrics for the original fairy tale title - the musical for families with children Cinderella (2000). For the project of the musical adaptation of Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka - The Musical (1999), which was his idea, he not only reworked the libretto, but was also co-producer and artistic director of the Prague production. In 2008, the Czech premiere of Richard Rodgers and Oskar Hammerstein's classic American musical II. Carousel, whose libretto he rewrote, and a year later Kalman's operetta-musical The Duchess of Chicago. Since 1990, he has been a regular broadcaster on Czech Radio's Muzikál expres - a programme of news and interesting facts from the world of musical theatre and film. In 2008, his eponymous encyclopedia of world musicals was published. Since 2006, he has been teaching the history and present of the world musical at the Department of Theatre Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague and has also given lectures on the subject at other schools. He has been participating in musical symposia abroad for many years and maintains contacts with a number of contemporary foreign musical creators, theorists and productions. He still lives permanently between Prague and Cologne.