Excerpts of well-known works performed by a Czech actor, director and teacher
Commentary by Dr. Ludmila Kopáčová to the original LP album 1 18 2107"National Artist Vítězslav Vejražka - Portrait of an Actor" released by Supraphon in 1977 and now released in its original form for the first time digitally:
Hand in hand with the text, with the verses of beloved poets, the national artist Vítězslav Vejražka met an untimely death on the morning of 8.6.1973. The fifty-eight-year-old actor passed away suddenly, in the middle of the work he loved so much, in the middle of a body of work that would surely have gone on to many more memorable roles. What was the power of his art, which was loved by audiences not only in the theatre, but also in film, television and radio? Above all, it was his perfect technical equipment, the way he could control his voice, body and facial expressions, and how exemplary and sensitive his pronunciation was. A passionate admirer of Stanislavsky, he perfectly penetrated into the interior of the characters he embodied and always found new qualities in them, which he used to bring them closer to the viewer. Passion, explosiveness, liveliness, temperament, Vitality, manliness - these were Vejražko's main attributes, who put themselves entirely at the service of their characters. There were not a few of them, despite the fact that his life ended so prematurely, despite the fact that there were certainly many tasks waiting for him, especially in the works of the authors closest to his acting nature - W. Shakespeare and M. Gorky. He was a typical representative of heroes, rebels, revolutionaries, rulers and lovers. One would almost like to say lover-rulers and ruler-lovers - for that is perhaps the best way to capture the basic note that echoed in Vejražka's acting and which, to some extent, we can also recognise on this record. Who is Oedipus - the man who became the husband of his own mother and thus the ruler of Thebes and the father of his brothers and sisters, the ruler who determines his own punishment for this terrible crime. Who is Mr. Vodicka? An explosive, jealous husband, the unlimited ruler in the house, fiercely and passionately in love with his wife and therefore so blinded. Only the furiant peasant Bušek from Our Furiants is somewhat out of line, which we can follow in Vejražko's work almost from the beginning. We would find here mainly Shakespearean characters, because V. Vejražka was a distinctly Shakespearean actor.
It was precisely the vitality of the transition from Renaissance to Baroque, which is mirrored by so many of the great playwright's characters, that was Vejražka's domain. His Oberon, the double Claudius - perhaps Vejražka's greatest and most famous role - Petruccio, Othello and Antony all have something in common: that masculine vitality and vigour associated with the qualities of a ruler. Wasn't Vejražek's Francek, the Miller of Lucerne or Janosik from the same family? But this brings us to the next pole of Vejražko's acting. To the type of hard, sometimes stubborn, alkaline, solid resistance fighters and revolutionaries, among whom we find Fucik, Jan Roháč or the peasant Juan from Lope de Vega's The Peasant is his Master. These manly rulers include despots such as Oinomaos as the Marshal of the White Sickness, from whom it is only a step to the helplessly angry Göring in Zinner's Devil's Circle. In his conception, they were indeed dangerous, hard and arrogant rulers.
The breadth of Vejražka's talent and acting mastery is perhaps most eloquently documented by the most telling example: Mrštík's Marysha, in which he transformed from Franck to Vávra in a television adaptation, so that the old Lízal became his acting epilogue. Czech drama was the actor's great love, which is why he created so many unforgettable, deeply human characters in it, such as his Zlatohlav in Tyl's Hard-Headed Woman or the Busek captured on this record. Vejražka's love and admiration for the classical legacy of our past was equally creatively combined with his love for Czech poetry, especially classical poetry. That is why on this record we meet a name so dear to Vejražko, Svatopluk Čech.
His political convictions and relationship to verse must have led V. Vejražku to S. K. Neumann, and a warm admiration for the rich Russian poetry of M. J. Lermontov. A single record can hardly capture the breadth of skill of an actor of such a characteristically heroic register as we have found in the national shallow V. Vejražky. Nevertheless, this disc brings together from existing recordings at least a cross-section of his admirably distinctive life's work as an actor and, in an excerpt from Our Furiants, his work as a director.
VÍTĚZSLAV VEJRAŽKA (*9.5.1915 - †8.6.1973)
