Ensemble Opera Diversa
is a Brno-based group of professional musicians and singers, comprising a chamber orchestra, soloists, singers, actors and the choir Ensemble Versus, that focuses on creating and performing innovative music and music-theatre projects. Although the orchestra does not have permanent employees, the company is stable in its personnel and is developing into a lithe and adventurous ensemble that explores unexpected niches of the musical repertoire of the twentieth and 21st centuries. Apart from classical music, the core of its activities lies in the operas and music-theatre work of its founding members, the composer Ondřej Kyas and librettist Pavel Drábek. Since its beginnings in 1999, the Ensemble has evolved into a music society that realises around 30 events every year. Its repertoire comprises six full- length operatic productions, twenty original mini operas, a dozen bespoke orchestral works and a large number of classical works.

The chamber orchestra was founded in 2005 and is led by its concert-master Jan Bělohlávek. The orchestra generally presents five thematic concert programmes every year. Individual concerts usually combine twentieth-century music with new works, predominantly by the in-house composer Ondřej Kyas and other affiliated composers, including Vojtěch Dlask, František Gregor Emmert, Peter Graham, Miloš Štědroň and Martin Wiesner.

The remarkable and little-known work of Jan Novák became a key element of the 2014 concerts of Ensemble Opera Diversa: each of the three events in a series entitled ‘The City as Music’ presented at least one work by Novák, marking the 30th anniversary of his death. Novák’s music remains an important element in the group’s repertoire. In October 2021, in one of a number of events celebrating Novák’s centenary, the 51st ‘Moravian Autumn’ festival presented a staged version of Karel Kachyňa’s 1966 film Kočár do Vídně (‘Coach to Vienna’), for which Jan Novák wrote the score, Ensemble Opera Diversa was entrusted with this world premiere.

Gabriela Tardonová
(née Piszkaliková) was born in Karviná, in eastern Moravia. At the age of five she joined the select musical group Permoník (a permoník is a supernatural being which inhabits and guards mines). In 1998 she graduated as a choral conductor from the Faculty of Education of Ostrava University, followed by the study of conducting with Rostislav Hališka and Lubomír Mátl at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. In 2002 she participated in Zsolt Nagy’s conducting master-classes in Ostrava and won the prize awarded there. In 2003–4 she studied at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz with Martin Sieghart. During this graduate scholarship she was selected to participate in the International Week Festival in Graz, conducting the university symphonic orchestra. She specialises in producing new operatic works (among them Markéta Dvořáková’s Giraffe Opera, Dvořáková’s and Ivo Medek’s MrTVÁ, and operas by Josef Berg). Alongside Tomáš Krejčí, she is the principal conductor of the Brno Youth Symphonic Orchestra. Since 2006, she has been working regularly with Ensemble Opera Diversa as principal conductor and as a member of its artistic team. Apart from conducting new concert projects, she has conducted the operas of Pavel Drábek’s and Ondřej Kyas’ The Pumpkin Demon in a Vegetarian Restaurant (2010), Ponava (Lost Rivers) (2013) and The Conjuror and His Slave (2016). Since 2012, she has been principal conductor of the ensemble in concert and has led the development of a distinctive sound for the group.