Matěj Kopecký (24 February 1775, probably in
Libčany
Libčany is a municipality and village in Hradec Králové District in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 900 inhabitants.
Administrative parts
The village of Želí is an administrative part of Libčany.
Notable peop ...
– 3 July 1847 in
Koloděje nad Lužnicí) was a
Czech puppeteer
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, called a puppet, to create the illusion that the puppet is alive. The puppet is often shaped like a human, animal, or legendary creature. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from ...
. For six generations his descendants followed the art of puppeteering.
Kopecký's father was a poor travelling puppeteer (''histrio vagus''). Matěj Kopecký married in 1795 and moved into the town of
Mirotice. Since 1789 to 1808 or 1809 he was forced to serve in the army, within the infantry regiment from
Písek. Later, he worked as watchmaker, travelling salesman or road worker. In 1818 he obtained licence for a puppet theatre and reached certain success in this activity. The parish record about his death, though, labels him as "''a histrion from Mirotice, widower and beggar''". Kopecký had at least fifteen children of which six had survived into adulthood. Most of them worked as puppeteers and the tradition was kept for six generations.
At his time the puppet theatre was, for many in the
Czech lands, the only contact with theatrical culture, with ideas of enlightenment and of the
Czech National Revival. While Kopecký was not the only Czech puppeteer, he became the most known one during the second half of the 19th century when his son
Václav Kopecký
Václav Kopecký (27 August 1897 – 5 August 1961) was a Czechoslovak Communist politician, journalist and chief ideologue of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during the leadership of Klement Gottwald. A high-ranking member of the party sin ...
published his plays in print, and due to a fictional picture of Kopecký by
Mikoláš Aleš.
In 1905, a small memorial to Kopecký was erected in
Týn nad Vltavou and in 1947 another one in the castle park in Koloděje nad Lužnicí. The town museum in
Týn nad Vltavou
/sup> hosts a permanent puppet exposition dedicated to Kopecký.
Works
Kopecký had used marionettes, with height up to 60 cm.
In 1862, a collection of 61 plays was published by Josef Richard Vilímek (1835–1911), Josef Richard Vilímek under the title "Comedies and plays by Matěj Kopecký as collected by his son Václav" (''Komedie a hry Matěje Kopeckého dle sepsání syna Václava''). Several people, among them Václav Thám Václav () is a Czech male first name of Slavic origin, sometimes translated into English as Wenceslaus or Wenceslas. These forms are derived from the old Slavic/Czech form of this name: Venceslav.
Nicknames are: Vašek, Vašík, Venca, Venda
For ...
, are listed as authors of the plays. Being intended for uneducated public, the plays had been full of emotions and naive humour. For most of the time Kopecký used Czech language, on occasions when had acted for high nobility German language.
References
External links
Biography
Biography with short overview of plays
(archived link)
(archived link)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kopecky, Matej
1775 births
1847 deaths
People from Hradec Králové District
Czech puppeteers