Jiří Šlitr was a musician who set Jiří Suchý's lyrics to music and co-founded the Semafor theatre.

Jiří Šlitr in a 1965 photo
Jiří Šlitr in a 1965 photoPhoto: Unknown author, 1965 · public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Jiří Šlitr was a musician who set the song lyrics of Jiří Suchý to music. His friend Miroslav Horníček brought him to the Reduta in Prague; there he offered to try setting Suchý's lyrics to music. The first one he set was Píseň o Hamletovi [1]. Suchý had performed at the Reduta on Národní since 1957 as a member of the Akord club group. [1] Before that, Šlitr had refused to set the lyrics of Kočky na okně, considering it too simple. [1]

Semafor

In 1959 Šlitr founded the Semafor theatre together with Suchý and the jazz musician F. Havlík [1]. Their joint work in 1959–1969 is summarised in the book Suchý a Šlitr/Semafor 1959—1969, mentioned by Plzeňský deník [2]. According to the same paper, Suchý was to appear on the Semafor stage on 6 October 2026 in a programme devoted to Jiří Šlitr [2]. The programme at Semafor was titled Extravagantní díkuvzdání Jiřímu Šlitrovi. [2]

Sources

  1. Divadlo Semafor
  2. Plzeňský deník