The day after her 82nd birthday, singer Marta Kubišová performed in the evening at the Lucerna cinema in Prague. As in the previous two years, she came here last Saturday as part of a program called Night with a Legend, thus ending the trilogy of these shows. Along with projected videos, she told her life story. In a relaxed mood, she received applause from the audience several times.
They came as guests Marta Kubišová the actress Iva Janžurová, the head of the cardiology department of Na Homolce Hospital Petr Neužil or the historian and vice-chancellor of Masaryk University Jiří Hanuš came to the stage for a wish. He presented the university’s gold medal to the singer on stage for his contribution to culture. “At Masaryk University, we usually give the medal to scientists or specialists, but we can also give it to people from the field of culture, that’s your case,” Hanuš said and thanked to Kubišová.
The packed auditorium of the Lucerna cinema greeted the star of the night with thunderous cheers. The first projected video recalled the birth of Kubišová and how she refused university studies or work in the Poděbrady glass factory. The singer reminded the audience of her grandfather, who was important to her. She explained how sad she was when he died and that she didn’t get to say goodbye to him because of the shows.
Audio-visual recordings brought the song closer Pray for Marthawhich became one of the symbols of the events of 1968 and later in November 1989. Kubišová summarized her life from childhood to singing career. She did not miss sensitive topics such as abortion and how she clinically died because of it.
She also mentioned the situation of her performance ban due to a fake pornographic collage. “Her hair was just like that,” the singer laughed in the hall. All the time she was communicating live with the audience, the atmosphere on the stage was calm and friendly.
Marta Kubišová encountered persecution already in her childhood. Following her father’s example, she wanted to study medicine, but the communists did not allow her to take the entrance exams. So she went to courses at the Oriental Institute for Indology and hoped in vain that she would at least get into this field.
In Poděbrady, where the family moved and where Kubišová worked in a glass factory after graduating, she was approached by a local musician who heard the young woman during a private prelude. He offered her to sing for a dance for the spa patients. Then an advertisement appeared in the newspaper for an audition for the Stop theater in Pardubice. Marta Kubišová won it and so it started a fast journey passing through the Alfa Pilsen stage to the Rokoko theater in Prague. they explained An economic newspaper.
It was in Rococo that she met Václav Neckár and Helena Vondráčková, with whom she founded the trio Golden Kids. As a twenty year old, she became a singer with a unique voice and sex appeal. Among her first hits was an originally French song The crescent moon hangs out.
In 1966, 1968 and 1969, she won the Golden Nightingale for the most popular female singer, she also won the Golden Bratislava Lyre in 1968 and signed a contract with the West German publishing house Polydor. Among other things, she played at the Olympia in Paris, at the MIDEM festival in Cannes, France and played in the film Martyrs of Love of her husband Jan Němek or in the series Song for Rudolph III, in which the Prayer for Martha was also heard.
This very song of hers, originally designed for an entertainment television series, became a symbol of resistance after the Warsaw Pact troops occupied Czechoslovakia, thanks to Kubišová’s secret speech and translation as “May peace continue to stay with this country” or “Now, when your lost control over things returns, your back will return to you, people, they will return.”
From February 1970, the singer was banned from performing because of her views, and the regime constantly prevented her from finding work. “The devil could not have chosen a better time to destroy her than the Bolsheviks,” said music critic Jiří Černý as the ban hit Kubišová in the biggest way.
Because of the pornographic picture that was sent, she was excluded from public life and experienced a serious personal crisis. She then worked for many years as a procurement officer for the Construction of Housing Estates.
“It was strange how the hopeful spring of Prague turned into such gloom and disappointment. she remembered in an interview for Aktuálně.cz. “When you meet some kind of resistance, it pushes you forward. They say even a dove wouldn’t fly if it didn’t have resistance under its wings,” she said.
Marta Kubišová was one of the first to sign Convention 77 and was its spokesperson. She was able to return to acting after almost 20 years of suspension, in November 1989, when she sang a Prayer for Martha again at Wenceslas Square during the revolution.
The last studio album called Soul, consisting entirely of recorded repertoire, she put out seven years ago, then on November 1, 2017, officially she finished singing career. Since then, he rarely sings in public. For example, in 2022 in Lucerne full at the Tribute to Marta concert she sang Pray for Martha and with the other musicians the song Hey Jude. In the future, however, she does not intend to do that anymore, not even specifically, as she said last Saturday. She noted that she does not miss singing.
After the Prague Lucerne, those interested will see Kubišová in person on November 7 in Hořovice, three days later in Sedlčany, and on November 14 in Mělník. The singer will put a symbolic end to her tour on November 17 in Cologne. Last year, on October 28, at the celebration of the 105th anniversary of the founding of independent Czechoslovakia, President Petr Pavel awarded her the TGM Order of the First Class.
Video: That I am the icon of the velvet revolution? I laugh at him, says Kubišová (14 November 2014)
I was surprised at how quickly the regime changed. It was a shock to me and a big surprise in my life, singer Marta Kubišová recalled on Velvet Revolution on DVtv. | Video: DVTV
