Baroness in the opera Jarmila Novotná
The Czech soprano found her home in the castle in Litno.
Next Music according to the calendar reminds of an excellent Czech opera singer and also a film actress Jarmila Novotná.
Czech soprano and film actress Jarmila Novotná was born on September 23, 1907 in Prague and supported her work in 1925 as a pupil of the National Theatre. However, she also performed in cabarets, played and sang in operettas, and appeared in Czech and foreign films. She is named Emma Destin’s most famous student, even though the famous opera diva only taught her for a few months.
Jarmila Novotná drew attention to her role as Mařenka in To Smetana’s Bartered Bride, which she performed at the National Theater when she was only eight years old. Thanks to her acting talent, she starred in many European dramas and one American film. He appeared in Czech films only twice – in a silent film Worshipers of the Sun and in sound melodrama The lark’s songwhere she also demonstrated her singing talent.
In 1927, Jarmila Novotná went to study in Italy. The friendship with the family of Tomáš Garrigu Masaryk also dates back to that time, who supported the young singer, and it was he who arranged for her to study in Milan. The following year, Novotná made her debut in Italy in Verdi’s Rigoletto and accepted a job in Berlin. On July 16, 1931, she married the nobleman Jiří Daubek, and from that moment on, her new Czech home became the chateau in Litni near Beroun..
After the rise of Nazism in Germany, she continued her work in Vienna and briefly in Prague. In March 1939, she went to New York with her husband and two children, where she became a soloist Metropolitan Opera, in which she sang until 1956. During the war, she organized a number of performances for wounded soldiers, Czech compatriots and for the benefit of war funds. After the establishment of the government in exile in London, she signed up to support the efforts of the Czechs to liberate their homeland, and her Lidice songs with piano accompaniment by Jan Masaryk, which she recorded during the days of the Heydrich in 1942, became a legend. In the post-war period, she returned to Bohemia for a short time, performed in Prodaná nevěsta and had a solo concert in the Municipal House.
(Jarmila Novotná as Marenka, Bartered Bride (photo Josef Heinrich / source Festival J. Novotná)
Fates Jarmila Novotná will remind and offer musical examples Martina Klausová in the program, which will premiere in Friday, September 23 at 7 p.m. You can listen to the replays on Sunday, September 25. at 9:00 a.m. and Wednesday 28.9. at 10:00 p.m.
Photo: Profimedia