BIOGRAPHY
Dusan Rapos was born in 1953 in Moravany in the Eastern Slovakia. In 1982 he graduated from the Television and Film Document Department of the Academy of Arts Bratislava. In 2000 he married in Las Vegas a famous Czech actress and poet Eva Vejmelkova, and they have two daughters, Tara and Rita. He lives in Havirov in Moravia and in Bratislava alternately. He works often for various foreign production companies as artist and producer.
He is known to the European cultural public first of all as a director and screenwriter popular among spectators. His movies, among which we would like to remind at least the names like the False Prince (1984), A Fountain for Susan 1 (1985), 2 (1993) and 3 (1999), Rabaka (1989), Let’s run, he’s coming! (1986), A Well of Youth (1987), Dido (1988), F.T. (1990), Karel Kryl – who am I...? (1994) and Suzanne (1996), were seen by millions of spectators not only in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic but also abroad.
He is also the winner of a lot of important prizes, mostly foreign ones. His latest movie to date, a family music comedy A Fountain for Susan 3, has won the highest prizes in the international film festivals in Atlanta and Philadelphia. The juries of both festivals valued highly not only the artistic and workmanship of the work, but also its significant anti-racist idea and international appeal for love, understanding and tolerance towards people of different colors.
As a stage director, dramatist and composer, he endorsed a successful monodrama, Maria, which was on the stage of the Teatro Bratislava several seasons and which was accepted with enthusiasm also by the demanding Parisian audience. It is less known, however, that the original profession of Dusan Rapos was composer and that he is the author of dozens of soundtracks and incidental music, composed mostly for German,
Austrian, Swiss, but also Slovak and Czech film, TV and stage productions. The authentic Slovak-American ballet The Children of the Titanic was his first musical and dramatic feature, created in cooperation with the famous choreographer Christopher d`Amboise from New York for the Ballet of the Slovak National Theater in Bratislava. After the roaring commercial success of the film Suzanne, the ballet The Children of the Titanic was his second important artistic and citizen’s utterance concerning the worldwide fight of mankind against the drug addiction of adolescents.
Also his non-commercial CDs Tenderness (1993), Angels of Sin (1996), Children of the Titanic (1996), Love Songs (2002), The Best of Dusan Rapos 2000, The Best of Dusan Rapos 2005, the CD-Single Amore Vittoria and the LP The Little Mouse in a Violin Case, recorded by the top European symphony ensembles and conductors, are of high artistic quality.
By the end of March 2002, the Orchestra of the Slovak Philharmonic and the Slovak Philharmonic Choir introduced in the Reduta concert hall an Easter festive concert Amore
Vittoria, which was the anthology of Pietro eLucia, the latest musical and dramatic work of the opera and ballet drama Pietro e Lucia, which calls mankind to bring to life the God of Goodness inside the people, was written and composed by Dusan Rapos on the motif of the famous novel Pierre et Luce by the French writer Romain Rolland. The text of the arias was written by the wife of , the actress Eva Vejmelkova, who introduced herself to the artistic public as a poet. The concert Amore Vittoria, introduced in close cooperation with the Embassy of the United States of America in Bratislava, was devoted to the innocent victims of terrorist attacks in New York. The arias and ballet parts were presented by the leading soloist of the Opera of the Slovak National Theater in Bratislava and the piano virtuoso, currently also the Director of the Slovak Philharmonic, Marian Lapsansky. The concert was conducted by a renowned American conductor Larry Newland from New York. The audience rewarded Dusan Rapos and all co-authors and performers with a persistent standing ovation. Also the TV record of the concert broadcast by Slovak Television on Easter Sunday was met with a large, positive response by watchers.
On Christmas 2003 a DVD with the musical film Rabaka was launched on the market. made this movie from the script of Boris Filan. The movie “about the fellowship of nuts, who live on rock“,
in the performed stylized form shows the hard times of musicians, members of nowadays legendary Slovak rock group Elan, starting their career during the times of totalitarian communist regime.
On Christmas 2004 the long-waited ’s DVD was finally released, Karel Kryl –who am I...?, in which Karel Kryl, the famous Czechoslovak poet, philosopher, songster and a long-time fighter against the communism put through his songs, poems and dialogues with us one of the basic
questions of mankind’s existence.
In March 2005 the DVD was released with the anti-drug movie, called Suzanne. The story of love of two addicts “about the fall into the bottomless abyss“, is a memento, that the individual addicted to drugs is able to sacrifice even the love of the dearest person “for the love of drugs“. And not only love...
In June 2005 it was a ceremony for the debut of the new 2CD The Best of Dusan Rapos 2005, which is an anthology of his film, ballet and opera music of the last 25 years. Peter Dvorský, the famous tenor, and Chantal Poulain, the French actress, were the patrons of the 2CD.
The fans of ’s films will surely be delighted that other films also are supposed to be released on DVDs in the next future, like the cult musical trilogy A Fountain for Susan,
a tragicomedy “about how much pain must you engender until you lose everything...“ Let’s run away, he is coming...! and the musical film F.T. en route, with the top Slovak and Czech singers and rock groups.
He prepare as a composer and producer an exclusive CD of Peter Dvorsky and his friends, where the famous world tenor accompanied by the Sui Generis Symphony Orchestra studio orchestra, the Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Motorband hard-rock band shall introduce himself in the rock and symphony duets with the Slovak and Czech opera and rock stars. The Amore Vittoria, the pilot single of this CD was very successful abroad, mainly in England, and last year it was nominated for the 2007 Crystal Wing Award in the category of music. In April 2007 he produced the Legends 60, a live concert of the Slovak beat stage of sixties in Bratislava at the suggestion of Dodo Suhajda, the former front man of The Buttons group. At the end of March he completed for the Czech TV in Ostrava the direction of documentary film about the life of Moravians and Slovaks titled Na pomezí (On the Borderland) from the Nas venkov (Our Countryside) series by the story of Jaromir Slosar. From October to December 2007 the Slovak TV broadcasted the ’s 10 episode TV documentary series Slovensky bigbit (The Slovak Big Beat) about the Slovak rock legends of sixties on the script by Lubos Jurik and Dodo Suhajda. In 2008 the Slovart released the series and the concert on a 3DVD within the homonymous book. Lubos Jurik, Dusan Rapos and Dodo Suhajda, the authors of the project, were awarded the 2008 Crystal Wing.
In October 2008 it was the opening night of his feature film Cinka Panna about a famous Romany female violinist, who opposed her fate. He made the film in the production of the Attack company, on the script by Lubomir Slivka with Jan Duris, as the director of photography. Katarina Vanzurova was the executive producer of the movie. The very first week after its presentation in the Slovak movie theatres Cinka Panna became number one in attendance. Cinka Panna was awarded the Golden Palm "for extraordinary achievement in film industry“.
Dusan Rapos together with Kamil Peteraj, the poet, and Tomas Roller, the graphic artist, created a multimedia 3D world of crazy moblies CMC – Crazy Mobile Community
(www.crazymobilecommunity.com).
Nowadays he prepares, as a producer and director, in cooperation with the Martin Production agency the world premiere of the Viva Afrika stage musical by his A Fountain for Suzan 3 cult film series.
As a composer and executive producer as well he prepared for the MJ Advisory, s.r.o. art agency monumental project Pietro e Lucia. The European premiere of this piece, a Czech- Slovak- French-Italian co-production was moved from May 4, 2015 to next year. The art work should present an appeal for the common fight against war, international terrorism and violence. The anti-war love story “Pietro e Lucia” (in the mother tongue of opera, Italian) is inspired by the novella by Romain Rolland, a French writer and humanist and recipient of the Nobel Prize. It was performed for the first time in Prague’s Tesla Arena on December 2, 2010, in front of 6,000 people. The play was introduced on a 360-degree stage, conducted by Maestro Marcello Rota,
the famous Italian conductor (who discovered the renowned tenor Andrea Bocelli) and under the direction and choreography of the Slovak dance perfectionist Jaroslav Moravcik. Artists from 7 European countries (Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Russia, Germany, England and Monaco) were rewarded for their performance with a long standing ovation.
Dusan Rapos shot and produced the movies Muzzikanti and fairy tale The Secret of the Double- Headed Dragon between 2017 and 2019.
Dusan Rapos – “artist of its own kind” – belongs among the most commercially successful Czechoslovak directors. As a composer he inclines toward the Italian music school. He has composed music for dozens of acting and documentary films, as well as for commercials and experimental films. He is the author of ballet and opera music. Currently Dusan Rapos works as a composer on his new opera and ballet score of crazy & romantic fantasy The Pink Sea as a film director on his new movie Woman's revenge now.
Dusan Rapos is member of BMI USA. His music is available on web music library AudioSparx.com
and on cdbaby.com
Rapos solidly commands several artistic languages simultaneously and thus the borders between the genres are foreign to him. It is his ideal that the work shall determine its artistic form itself depending on what it wants to say to the audience.
RECORDINGS
Suzanne - Drama
1996