In Focus | All stories

At the age of just 23, Ondřej Kania has already established a successful agency that sends Czechs students to prestigious boarding schools in the United States and Canada and opened a private high-school in Prague. The young entrepreneur, who himself studied in the United States because he was dissatisfied with the Czech education system, has other plans in the works. In September, he is set to open the very first American high-school in central Europe. When I met with Ondřej Kania, I asked him how he came to set up a school at an age when most

Antonín Dvořák’s most famous opera Rusalka is back on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The highly anticipated production of the “lyric fairy tale” about a water nymph, who wishes to become a human in order to be loved by a young prince, is only the second in the history of the Metropolitan Opera. RF has more in today’s edition of In Focus.

On the occasion of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka, which premieres on February 2, the Czech Centre in New York has prepared a unique exhibition, featuring the original score of the famous opera. It is the first time in history that the rare manuscript has left the territory of the Czech Republic.

It is a well-known fact that there are various dialects in human languages, but not everyone is perhaps aware that the same holds true for birdsong. A new study by Czech scientists has researched the dialects of the yellowhammer, a tiny bright yellow bird of the bunting family, shedding light on the cultural evolution of birdsong. Scientists revealed that the original yellowhammer dialects thought to have gone extinct in Great Britain have survived in birdsong overseas, particularly in New Zealand immigrants.

How has the Czech language developed over the past four decades? What expressions do we borrow from other languages and which words have fallen into oblivion? These are just some of the question I asked Martin Prošek, the head of the Institute of the Czech language, which has just started to release a new monolingual dictionary of Czech. Its first chapter, containing words starting with the letter A, has just been published in electronic form.

With environmental issues becoming more prominent, the off-grid movement where dwelling, for example, are reliant on their own sources of power and water, has been gaining more and more support and interest around the world. A new project called Český Ostrovní dům or Czech Island House seeks to raise awareness of self-sustainable living in the Czech Republic. Twelve months ago, they launched a competition for architecture students, asking them to create their own project for an off grid building, and just recently they have announced its first winners.

Pioneers and Robots is the title of a new book focusing on the golden era of Czechoslovak illustration, which was recently released by the Paseka publishing house. Written by two graphic artists, the book offers an in-depth account of the development of visual arts in Czechoslovakia after the Communist takeover in 1948.

Tereza Mináriková is a zoologist, who spent a number of years heading the Conservation Policies Unit of the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic. She is now with the NGO Alka Wildlife, serving as a manager of research projects; she is also a specialist in carnivorous wildlife, and has a particular passion for lynxes.

The Czech expatriate community in the Australian city of Brisbane only counts several hundred people, but they have always been very active in maintaining the Czech language and culture for future generations. One of the members of the local expat community is Lenka TeWhiu, who settled in Brisbane more than fifteen years ago. I caught up with her during her recent visit to Prague to talk about her life in Australia and about her work for a local radio station. But I first asked her how she herself ended up living in Australia:

This Monday marked exactly 50 years since the death of Alice Masaryková, the first daughter of Czechoslovakia’s first president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and his American wife Charlotte. A prominent figure in Czechoslovakia between the wars, Alice Masaryková is mostly remembered today as the founder of the Czechoslovak branch of the International Red Cross.