Prague, Sept 22 (CTK) – Czech conductor Jiri Belohlavek, writer Ivan Klima, actor, singer, lyricist and artist Jiri Suchy and actor and scriptwriter Zdenek Sverak were declared honorary citizens of Prague yesterday.
Belohlavek, 70, is chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. In 2006-12, he was chief conductor of the London BBC Symphony Orchestra.
In 2012 he was presented with the Order of the British Empire and in 2016 the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague granted him an honorary degree.
Works by Klima, 85, have been translated into 29 languages in more than 30 countries.
Suchy, who will turn 85 on October 1, was a co-founder of the Na Zabradli and Semafor theatres. Semafor was very popular mainly among young people, which generated a number of problems with the communist regime. Suchy became the theatre’s director again after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.
Zdenek Sverak, 80, is a scriptwriter, director and co-author of the legend about the fictitious universal Czech genius Jara Cimrman, who is very popular among Czechs.
One of the plays “written” by Cimrman was performed in English by British actors under the auspices of the British Council and the Jara Cimrman Theatre in Prague for the first time in 2014.
Sverak wrote the script for Kolya, a film which won the foreign-language Oscar Award in 1997. Another film for which he wrote the script and which was nominated for Oscar is The Elementary School of 1991. He played in both films.
Sverak is also the scriptwriter of another Czech film nominated for Oscar, My Sweet Little Village of 1985, directed by Jiri Menzel.
