2024-04-16 00:42:03
The late 85th birthday of singer Karel Gott will be commemorated by a memorial concert, which will take place on November 5 in Prague’s O2 arena. Lucie Bílá, Michal David and Richard Krajčo will perform at the event called Karel Gott – his songs live on, the Bestsport organizing agency announced on Monday.
Stars from completely different genres than pop will take turns on the stage. They will be accompanied by the band Maxiband of actor and musician Jan Maxián, and in the evening will be conducted by moderator Libor Bouček. Tickets will be available from Ticketmaster and Ticketportal from Friday.
“It is not by chance that we chose as the subtitle of the concert that Karel’s songs live on. Some of the songs will be performed by singers that perhaps the fans would not have expected in connection with Karel, and at the same time we gave them space to interpret the songs in their own way, in order to breathe a ‘new’ life into them ,” explains widow Ivana Gottová. “Karel was fond of non-traditional musician connections. I am therefore sure that he would like such an idea, I believe that the program will appeal to a wide audience across generations,” she adds without further details.
One of the most popular Czech artists and winner of 42 Golden Nightingale or Czech Nightingale awards died in 2019, he was 80 years old. He would have celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday this year on July 14. The concert in the O2 arena is one of the projects being prepared by Ivana Gottová. For several months now, he and his team have been working on the so-called Ville Gott, when the house in Nad Bertramkou street will be made available to the public. The opening was originally planned for this fall, but due to complicated preparations, operations will not begin until the first half of 2025 at the earliest.
“Some time ago, we announced that this year the fans will be able to take a look into Karl’s privacy. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to enter the interior of Bertramka yet, but we have decided to transfer at least a little of Villa Gott directly to the stage of the O2 arena,” notes Ivana Gottová.
The public said goodbye to the singer, who influenced several generations of listeners, on October 11, 2019 in the Žofín Palace, where approximately 49,000 people came. A day later, a funeral mass was held in St. Vitus Cathedral. Relatives, friends, colleagues, politicians, singers, actors and athletes arrived. A state of mourning was also declared that day.
Since then, Karel Gott has been commemorated by the posthumously published autobiography entitled My Path to Happiness, the book Gott: Czechoslovak story by journalist Pavel Klusák, awarded with the Magnesia Litera award, and most recently the Gott forever project last year. It was created with the help of artificial intelligence, which narrated the autobiography in Gott’s voice. The project became the most listened to read-through in the history of Czech Radio, recording more than a million plays.
Video: Olga Malířová Špátová remembers Karel Gott
Olga Malířová Špátová, the author of his film portrait, learned that the singer suffers from an incurable disease a month after the shooting began. | Video: Aktuálně.cz