Jaroslav Kvapil (25 September 1868 in

Chudenice Chudenice (german: Chudenitz) is a market town in Klatovy District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 800 inhabitants. Chudenice lies approximately north-west of Klatovy, south-west of Plzeň, and south-west of Prague. A ...

Kingdom of Bohemia The Kingdom of Bohemia ( cs, České království),; la, link=no, Regnum Bohemiae sometimes in English literature referred to as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe, the predecessor of the modern Czec ...

– 10 January 1950 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

) was a Czech poet,

theatre director A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors a ...

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

, playwright, and

librettist A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major litu ...

. From 1900 he was a director and Dramaturg at the National Theatre in

, where he introduced plays by Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...

into the repertory. Later he was a director at the

Vinohrady Theatre Vinohrady Theatre ( cs, Divadlo na Vinohradech) is a theatre in Vinohrady, Prague. Construction began on February 27, 1905. It served as the Theatre of the Czechoslovak Army from autumn 1950 to January 1966. It contains a curtain painted by Vl ...

(1921–1928). He wrote six plays, but is today chiefly remembered as the librettist of Antonín Dvořák's '' Rusalka''. Kvapil was the principal author of the Manifesto of Czech writers of 1917, signed by over two hundred leading Czechs, favouring the concept of Czech self-government.J. Poláček, ''Manifest českých spisovatelů'' (2007) He was married to actress Hana Kvapilová from 1894 until her death in 1907.

References

1868 births 1950 deaths People from Klatovy District People from the Kingdom of Bohemia Czechoslovak National Democracy politicians Members of the Revolutionary National Assembly of Czechoslovakia 20th-century Czech dramatists and playwrights Czech male dramatists and playwrights Czech Freemasons Czech male poets Czech opera librettists Recipients of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk 19th-century Czech dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Czech poets 20th-century male writers {{Czech-writer-stub