Czech Chamber Music Society • Lada Bočková

In the 2023/2024 season, soprano Lada Bočková will appear on her home stage, Theater Bonn in Germany, as Laudine (Moritz Eggert: Iwein) and in Edvard Grieg’s scenic music to Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. She will make her debut at the National Theatre in Prague as Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) and Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), she will return to the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava in the role of the Vixen (Janáček: The Cunning Little Vixen) and will reappear there as Karolína (Smetana: Two Widows). She will assume the part of Clorinda in the concert version of Rossini’s La cenerentola in Prague’s Smetana Hall and in the same hall, she will sing in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

Lada Bočková has been a member of the Theater Bonn opera ensemble in Germany since the 2020/2021 season, where she made her debut in October 2020 in the title role of Cavalli’s La Calisto. She has also created here the roles of Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Clorinda (La Cenerentola), Laudine (Iwein) and Tebaldo (Don Carlo).

A graduate of JAMU in Brno, she has been a member of the opera studio at the Teatro Lirico Spoleto since April 2017, where she made her debut as Frasquita (Carmen) and later assumed the roles of Dorina (L’impressario delle Canarie), Ivana (Re di Donne), Violetta (La traviata) and within the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto the role of Clorinda (La cenerentola). In 2018 she performed as Olga (Die lustige Witwe) at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and became a guest soloist at the National Theatre Brno and the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, where she shone in the role of Despina (Così fan tutte). In March 2022, she made her debut in Aalto Theater in Essen in the role of Tebaldo (Don Carlo). In 2019, she was the first Czech female singer in history to successfully participate in two world singing competitions: the Plácido Domingo’s Operalia and the Queen Sonja Competition in Oslo. She is also a laureate of the Interpretation Competition of the Czech Philharmonic in Prague, the Hilde Zadek Competition and the Otto Edelmann Competition in Austria and the “SWR Junge Opernstars” at the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie in Germany. She is a regular concert guest with front Czech orchestras (Czech Philharmonic, PKF — Prague Philharmonia, Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic, Janáček Philharmonic).

Pianist, singer, vocal coach and teacher Ahmad Hedar is one of the most sought-after opera accompanists in the Czech Republic. He studies piano at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in the class of František Malý and he participated in many master classes under the guidance of Paul Badura-Skoda, Andrei Gavrilov, Zenon Fishbein and others. In 2019, he became a scholarship holder of the prestigious Bayreuther Festspiele.

As an opera accompanist and coach, he works with leading singers of the young generation – Petr Nekoranec, Kateřina Kněžíková, Terezá Mátlová, Roman Hoza or Arnheiður Eiríksdóttir, but also with such opera legends as Gabriela Beňačková, Eva Randová, Vladimír Chmelo and others. Among the foreign stars, let’s mention the collaboration with Mariusz Kwieczeń, Bryan Hymel and Xabier Anduaga.

He regularly cooperates with opera houses abroad, as a voice coach and pianist in staging Czech operas – Rusalka at Bergen Nasjonale Opera (2021, 2023), Jenufa at Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse (2022). He is a regular guest of the Czech Center in New York, he toured with Czech singers Ester Pavlů and Kristýna Kůstková (2021, 2022) in the USA.

Ahmad Hedar is also the Music Director of the RunOpeRun ensemble, which – under the leadership of founder Veronika Loulová – tries to bring opera closer to young people and the general public. He led musical productions of La Traviata, The Magic Flute, Le nozze di Figaro, Rusalka and La voix humaine. Since 2019, he has been teaching at the Jan Deyl Conservatory, and recently also at the AMU in Prague as an accompanist and operatic coach.