Hana Hegerová celebrates her 88th birthday: Her birthday gift will be a concert given by colleagues who will sing her songs
The Queen of Czech Chanson is celebrating her 88th birthday today and her fans can look forward to a unique concert. Star singers will perform there, singing her songs. Hana Hegerová has not appeared on stage for years due to her poor health and old age, but everyone is hoping she will show up this evening for at least a moment.
She hasn't been actively performing and singing for more than eight years. That is why her supporters and colleagues, headed by Petr Malásek, who had accompanied her with his band for long years, decided to organize a unique birthday concert. It is on the occasion of Hana Hegerová's 88th birthday, which she celebrates today.
Lucie Bílá, Hana Zagorová, Lenka Filipová and other stars will sing her songs in the Prague Karlín Forum. Tickets for 20th October were immediately sold out, so the organizers added one more concert a day later. Again, tickets were gone in the blink of an eye.
And no wonder - due to health problems, Hana Hegerová, also nicknamed Edith Piaf from Prague, no longer performs, she rarely gives interviews for the media and almost never leaves her apartment in the Old Town Square. In the summer, she admitted she was suffering from kidney issues and had to walk with the aid of a cane.
Wishful thinking: May she show up!
It is therefore only natural that people want to remember her. And pretty much every fan hopes she will show up at least for a moment. After all, some years ago, she said: "I honor the motto: never say never. Therefore, I don't exclude the possibility that I will accept an invitation to appear as a guest in someone else's program sometime in the future."
And this would undoubtedly be an ideal opportunity! Hana Hegerová has hundreds of thousands of fans and her unmistakable voice can plunge deep into the memory of both the older and the younger generation.
The singer was born in Bratislava and initially worked in multiple Slovak theaters. In the 1960s, however, she came to Prague, where she performed, among other venues, in the legendary Semafor theater. She soon became famous even beyond the borders of Czechoslovakia and made appearances, for instance, on German television, in Paris or at the World Exhibition in Montreal, Canada. In 2002 she received the Medal of Merit from the then President Václav Havel. Her best-known songs include Šťastné slunce (Happy Sun), Levandulová (Lavender), Lásko prokletá (The Cursed Love), Cesta (The Journey), Black Jessie or Potměšilý host (Conniving Guest).
