Musician, Thomas Bertolotti began playing the cello at the age of eight and by the age of 15, he was awarded a highly sought-after scholarship to study on weekends at the Junior Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.  He spent ten years at Hymers College and left after his A Levels to study music performance at the Royal Academy of Music, gaining a 2:1, before also studying for a master's degree there.

He has recently gained a new position as Co-Principal Cello of the South Bohemian Theatre Orchestra in the Czech Republic.

In Czech it translates as second concertmaster, but in English we don't say this. I apologise, I'm doing my best to translate as best I can. My Czech is still very poor.  I started playing on 2nd March of this year (2023).

Since I have been here, we have performed Cinderella by Prokofiev, The Magic Flute by Mozart, Mephistopheles by Boita and a Czech musical called "Slečna Vdova" (Miss widow).  Next year we will be performing most famously, the Barber of Seville.

The theatre is based in Southwest Czech Republic near the Austrian border and was established in 1919. The city is called České Budějovice (good luck pronouncing it, I’m still not sure after a few months here! I now believe that Czech is the hardest language to pronounce in Europe) and I have been playing here for nearly a month now roughly.

It currently boasts 4 ensembles, of which I play in the Opera orchestra. These are Drama, Ballet, Opera and Marionettes (puppeteering? I'm unsure the English term, but puppeteering is a big tradition in Czechia and this theatre has a permanent puppet theatre with full cast).  Last year, one of the operas won a national award for its production of "Mephistopheles"

My orchestra has musicians of many nationalities including: Bulgarian, Brazilian, Colombian, Russian, Belarusian, Costa Rican, Slovenian and Italian (as well as many Czechs of course).  The orchestra has an important outdoor theatre called the "revolving theatre"  due to the rotating stage for summer opera in Cesky Krumlov, which is considered a nationally important festival.  Sometimes, the orchestra goes on tour, most recently performing in Prague National Theatre.

To read our previous story about his career since leaving Hymers College, please visit OH performs in Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, Košice