Jiří Habart (1992) belongs to the youngest generation of Czech conductors. He studied conducting at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno under Jakub Klecker and Tomáš Hanus, and choral conducting under prof Blanka Juhaňáková. He participated in conducting courses under Tomáš Netopil, Kirk Trevor, Zsolt Nagy and Mark Stringer. Jiří Habart also studied baroque violin under the guidance of the renowned virtuoso Lenka Torgersen, the concertmistress of the Collegium Marianum ensemble. He has worked with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester Hamburg, Kodály Philharmonic Debrecen, Brno Philharmonic, Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc, Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Zlín, Pilsen Philharmonic, South Bohemian Philharmonic. He staged the operas L'Impresario in Angustie (Cimarosa), Orpheus and Eurydice (Gluck) and, as assistant conductor, The Magic Flute (Mozart) with the Chamber Opera of the JAMU in Brno. As part of the International Opera and Music Festival Janáček’s Brno 2018, he performed together with the Chamber Opera HF JAMU in a staging of two contemporary operas, Falstaff and Unknown. At the National Theatre in Brno, he participated as assistant conductor in the musical staging of Antonín Dvořák's opera The Devil and Kate. At the 13th Dvořák Prague 2020 International Music Festival, he performed as a substitute for Tomáš Netopil in the same capacity in the orchestration of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In the 2023/2024 season, Jiří Habart will make his debut with the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava. He will also perform for the first time at the Janáček May Festival with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra and with the Slovak Philharmonic at the Allegretto Žilina Festival. Since the 2019/2020 season he has been the conductor of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre opera ensemble in Ostrava. So far he has conducted the ballets Don Quixote (Minkus), Dangerous Liaisons (Mascats), Corsair (Adam - Barcaroli), The Nutcracker - A Christmas Carol (Tchaikovsky) and the operas The School for the Jealous (Salieri), Nabucco (Verdi), Manon (Massenet) and the operas B. Smetana's Two Widows, The Bartered Bride and Dalibor. He prepared two baroque operas in his première musical staging: The Dance of the Ungrateful (Monteverdi) and Dido and Aeneas (Purcell). In the current season, he is preparing for Smetana's Brandenburg in Bohemia as well as Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

 

In 2023, Jiří Habart ranked 5th in the Zoltán Kodály Conducting Competition in Debrecen, Hungary, where he also won special prizes from the Hungarian State Opera and the orchestras Budafoki Dohnányi Zenekar and Kodály Philharmonia Debrecen. In the same year, he was a finalist in the prestigious Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition 2023 in London. He holds a Bayreuther Festspiele Scholarship 2014.