Jaroslav Březina

He studied at the Prague conservatory under the tutelage of Professor Zdeněk Jankovský and after graduating further honed his technique with Václav Zítek. He is a laureate of the A. Dvořák competition in Karlovy Vary and the M. Schneider Trnavský competition in Trnava. His concert activity is extensive, primarily as regards projects pertaining to the baroque and classical repertoire. He has appeared on concert stages in Japan, Austria (Salzburg), Norway, Italy (performance of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater in Rome and Pisa), Germany, France and Spain. In 1998 and 2000 he took part in a tour of the Netherlands with J. S. Bach’s St. Mathew Passion (Concertgebouw Amsterdam). Since 1993 he has been a soloist of Prague’s National Theatre Opera, where he has created a host of roles from both the Czech and world repertoire. He has above all excelled as Vašek in The Bartered Bride, Count Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Zinovij Borisovich in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Jaroslav Březina has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon a compact disc of Ryba’s Czech Christmas Mass. He has also participated in the recording of Zelenka’s coronation opera Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis for the company Supraphon, which won the 2002 Cannes Classical Awards, as well as Janáček’s Šárka and Dvořák’s comic opera The Stubborn Lovers. He has rendered Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared at Madrid’s Royal Opera House, at the international music festival Moravian Autumn, the Janáček-Hukvaldy festival, within the concert season of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and between 1998 and 2001 regularly within the seasons of the National Theatre in Prague.