, 2005 Edvard Schiffauer was born in
Ostrava in the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the
Czech Republic) in an educated upper-middle-class family. However, the family's quality of life degraded after the
communist 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état. In 1960, Schiffauer started his studies at the
Technical University of Ostrava, which he discontinued, instead completing his master's degree at the Pedagogical Institute of the
University of Ostrava in 1964. He also began studying musical composition in the
Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 1961, Schiffauer and other students established the theatre Divadélko Pod okapem (Little Theatre under the Gutter), which became an Ostrava equivalent of the
Semafor Theatre, in Prague. Furthermore, he was involved in the foundation of the Divadlo Waterloo (Waterloo Theatre), where his musical
Syn Pluku (
Son of the Regiment) was performed in 1968. Later, the Waterloo Theatre was banned by authorities in the normalization era in
Czechoslovakia, and a large-scale court trial against those involved in the theatre and specifically in this musical's production was held. As a result, Schiffauer was expelled from the Academy of Performing Arts and sentenced to nine months of imprisonment. He served his sentence in the prison in
Plzeň-Bory, where he drafted early versions of his children's opera
Vrať nám, ptáku, hastrmana (
Bring us Hasterman back, Bird) with author
Ivan Binar, his friend and later
Charter 77 signatory. After the
Velvet Revolution, Schiffauer was allowed to complete his university education, which he did at the
Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts, and could fully dedicate his time to musical composition. During his career he taught in the
Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava and in the
Silesian University in Opava. == Works ==