Dvorský studied under
Ida Černecká at the
Bratislava State Conservatory. Yet during the study, he made his professional opera debut at the
Slovak National Theatre in 1972, as Lensky in
Tchaikovsky's
Eugene Onegin. A year later, he won the national singing contest named after
Mikuláš Schneider-Trnavský at
Trnava in 1973. In 1974, he won the first prize at the international
Tchaikovsky Competition in
Moscow. As part of the prize, he was accepted into
La Scala's Scuola di Perfezionamento. In 1975, he won first place in the singing contest at the
Geneva International Music Competition. He then entered a yearlong apprenticeship under
Renata Carosia and
Giuseppe Lugga at
La Scala in
Milan from 1976 to 1977. In the following years, he quickly achieved international fame. He debuted at the
Vienna State Opera, where he was particularly successful and popular, in 1976, at the
New York Metropolitan Opera in 1977, and at
La Scala, Milan in 1979. His
Covent Garden debut was as the Duke in Verdi's
Rigoletto in 1978. Dvorský was highly esteemed by
Luciano Pavarotti, who referred to him several times as "my legitimate successor". In these years he became one of the leading tenors worldwide. He received several distinctions, among others being a national artist and state prize-winner of the former Czechoslovakia. On October 16, 1996, Dvorský resigned from his 24-year position at the
Slovak National Theater (SND), in protest to Slovak Culture Minister
Ivan Hudec's firing of director Dušan Jamrich. This event also prompted the resignation of former SND opera director Juraj Hrubant. Of his resignation, Dvorský said: "The reason why I have resigned is because of changes in SND... I left because I don't agree with a culture policy of this kind and also a transformation like this. Unfortunately, I cannot take it anymore." Since 2006, Dvorský has been the head of the opera house in
Košice, then of the opera house of the Slovak National theater (SND) in Bratislava. ==References==