Background
His father was a member of the Prague National Theatre Orchestra, and his younger brother Miroslav was a choirmaster.
His father was a member of the Prague National Theatre Orchestra, and his younger brother Miroslav was a choirmaster.
Student, Academy Music and Dramatic Arts, Prague.
He was particularly well known as an opera conductor. Košler came from a musical family. After finishing his studies at the gymnasium he enrolled at the AMU in Prague.
In 1948, still as a student, he began to work as a répétiteur at the Prague's National Theatre. In that time he began also to gain some experience with the baton. In 1949 Košler joined the Olomouc opera, where he conducted works by Leoš Janáček (The Makropulos Affair) and by W. A. Mozart (Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro).
From 1962 to 1964 Košler was appointed to the Zdeněk Nejedlý Theatre in Ostrava. He worked also with foreign ensembles and opera houses, conducted Richard Strauss's opera Salome at the Vienna State Opera, performed the complete cycle of Dvořák's symphonies with the Vienna Symphony. In the late sixties he also became the guest-conductor at the Comic Opera in Berlin.
Košler was hired as the second conductor of the Czech Philharmonic and became the principal conductor of the Bratislava opera house in 1971. From 1980 to 1984 he also led the orchestra of the National Theatre in Prague. He retired in 1992. Zdeněk Košler was well-known outside Czechoslovakia, as he made concert tours to England, Austria, USA, and Canada.
He toured most often to Japan, where he performed with various orchestras thirty times.
Married Jana Svobodova, 1954.