Karel Gott

Biography

In 1963 the song “Oči sněhem zaváté” (“Snowdrift Eyes”), from a show at the Semafor Theatre, became the most popular song in Czechoslovakia and brought the singer his first Golden Nightingale. In all, he would win forty-two of them.

Karel Gott was born on 14 July 1939 in Plzeň, the only child in the family. During the war a bomb destroyed the family’s house, and they lived with his grandmother in the country, and from 1946 in Prague. From childhood he wanted to draw, and his parents gave him an easel. In Prague he tried to enter an art school but was not accepted. He then went to train as an electrician at a school attached to the ČKD factory. Alongside this he sang in amateur competitions. In 1958, according to some accounts, he took part in the “Looking for Talent” contest, and the jury did not rate him, but the audience liked him, and he received his first engagements in Prague cafés. The sources differ on the details: according to some, he took first place in the contest under a pseudonym.

In 1960 he left the factory and entered the Prague Conservatory, where he studied opera singing with Konstantin Karenin, a pupil of Feodor Chaliapin. Karenin, knowing that his student was drawn to contemporary music, taught him more than the classical repertoire. Gott then studied for several more years by correspondence and with private teachers, until 1966.

In 1962 his first record came out, a duet with Vlasta Průchová, “Až nám bude dvakrát tolik” (“When We Are Twice as Old”). That same year he got a place at Semafor, the most prominent of the small-form theatres at the start of Czech pop. In 1965, together with the brothers Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl, he founded the Apollo Theatre in Prague and was its main star until it was dissolved in 1967. In 1964 he first travelled to the USSR and was an immediate success there; he performed at the festival in Sopot. In 1966 he won first prize at the Bratislava Lyre.

In 1967, at the music trade fair in Cannes, he signed a contract with the West German label Polydor. He then went to Las Vegas for several months and performed at the New Frontier casino. In 1968 he represented Austria at Eurovision with the song “Tausend Fenster” and came thirteenth. In German-speaking countries he came to be called “the Golden Voice of Prague”. From 1970 he was accompanied by the orchestra of Ladislav Štaidl.

Among the best-known songs of the 1960s and 1970s are “Lady Carneval” and the theme song of the cartoon series “Maya the Bee”, which he recorded in Czech, Slovak and German. His first record in Russian, released in 1977 by Melodiya, sold more than four and a half million copies. In 1978, at the “Song-78” festival in the USSR, he sang a duet with Sofia Rotaru. He also appeared in films, though rarely: he played the lead in the musical film “A Star Falls Upwards” (1974), and soon afterwards said himself that he did not want that kind of film work again.

In January 1977 Gott signed the so-called Anticharter, a statement by cultural figures in support of the authorities that was a response to Charter 77. Later he was asked about it many times; for many years he denied any fault, and in his posthumously published autobiography “My Way to Happiness” (2021) he admitted that the signature was a mistake. In May of that year he received the title of Merited Artist, and on 30 April 1985 he became a National Artist of Czechoslovakia, the first pop singer ever to hold that title. In the autumn of 1989 he sang the Czechoslovak anthem with Karel Kryl in Wenceslas Square.

In 1990 Gott announced that he was leaving the stage and gave a farewell tour, but the success of the concerts made him change his mind. In 1992 his album “Když muž se ženou snídá” became the best-selling album in the country. From 1996 he again won regularly in the revived Czech Nightingale poll, and in 2000 he performed at Carnegie Hall in New York. In the 1990s he began to paint in earnest: the first exhibition of his pictures was held in Prague in 1992, and later they were shown in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna and Bratislava. In 2017 he received the Silver Archer award for his contribution to Czech-Russian cultural cooperation.

Gott died on 1 October 2019 in Prague, at home, at eighty. On the day of his funeral the government declared a day of national mourning. On 12 October a funeral mass with state honours was held in St Vitus Cathedral in Prague. His ashes were laid to rest in the Malvazinky cemetery. In 2020 he was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Lion, First Class.