Biography – Ema Katrovas

Ema Katrovas is a vocal performer, artistic researcher, translator, and writer whose work centers on voice as material—sung, spoken, and written—across performance, interdisciplinary creation, research, translation, and cultural journalism.

Performing

Ema’s formative professional years were spent performing with Czech regional opera companies, including Kammer Oper Prague, the F.X. Šalda Theater in Liberec, and the Silesian Theater in Opava. Alongside operatic work, she collaborated with non-classical ensembles and theatrical groups such as Indigo Company (since 2016) and the Okamžitý Filmový Orchestr (2018–2019). When in the Czech Republic, she performs with Duo KaM, which she founded in 2017 to bring unusual song programs to a broad public. Most recently, she appeared in the new music chamber cycle of the PKF–Prague Philharmonia (2022) and at the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota (2023).

Ema received her Master’s degree from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in 2017. In 2020, she was selected as one of six participants by Thomas Quasthoff for his masterclass at the Bach Archiv in Leipzig. In 2020 and 2021, she studied contemporary vocal repertoire with Sarah Maria Sun and improvisation with Christoph Ogiermann at the John Cage Institute in Halberstadt, where she placed second in the John Cage New Music Competition in 2020.

Creating

Her interdisciplinary performance work includes projects for the Prague City Gallery, where she sang in the Light Underground Festival (2020) and was praised for her “provocative voice,” and for the Czech National Monument of Literature, where she co-created an installation project in 2022, contributing original vocal compositions. In 2023, she presented her own installation, Aoidographies, at the What’Sup Festival at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon.

From 2022 to 2024, Ema lived in Lyon, France, where she completed an Artist Diploma at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon. Her diploma project, Diva Lazarus, which she both wrote and performed, was supported by the Fondation d’entreprise Société Générale C’est vous l’avenir scholarship. An excerpt of the work was presented at the POTE Festival in Besançon (2023), and the full project premiered at the Festival Les Fabricants at the Théâtre de la Renaissance (2024). Diva Lazarus also benefited from a short development residency at the GRAME institute (2024). In the summer of 2024, Ema led a workshop and presented her ideas on “vocal theatre” at the PGVIM International Symposium in Bangkok.

Between 2020 and 2023, she worked on Echo, a short musical film built around the monodrama Sentiment by composer Juliana Hall and librettist Caitlin Vincent. Her broader artistic interests continue to explore vocal theater, contemporary repertoire, and reduced-scale forms that question conventional operatic production.

Communicating

Ema is also engaged in translation, writing, and cultural journalism.

Her translations of Czech poet Pavel Šrut were published as the collection Paper Shoes (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009), and her translations of short stories by Bohumil Hrabal appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review (2010) and Calque (2009). Her own short story was published in Redivider in 2019. For over a decade, she has translated for film, theater, academic journals, and galleries.

In the summer of 2021, she attended the academy of the Aix-en-Provence Festival on full scholarship as a cultural journalist.

She is the host of the Classically (Un)Trained podcast, which examines questions facing artists—particularly those trained in classical traditions—who are navigating a changing professional landscape. In Spotify Wrapped 2025, the podcast was designated a “Marathon Show,” placing it above 51% of podcasts globally by total listening time.

She is currently conducting research on “poor opera” at GLAREAN, the European Doctoral College for Musical Interpretation and Artistic Research. Her scientific thesis advisor is Grazia Giacco and her artistic thesis advisor is Françoise Kubler.

On her Substack, also called Classically (Un)Trained, she publishes everything from artist profiles to articles on issues surrounding the arts.

The Future (Works in Progress)

Media

“And the fish were frightened,” a performance piece using the text of an interview with Cathy Berberian, John Cage’s “Aria” and a collage of other pieces (recorded March 29th, 2024)