Jarmila Novotná

Jarmila Novotná was born on September 23, 1907, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and died on February 9, 1994, in New York City. A Czech lyric coloratura soprano and actress, she built one of the most distinguished operatic careers of the twentieth century while also establishing a presence in film and on Broadway.

Novotná studied under Emmy Destinn and made her operatic debut at the National Theatre in Prague on June 28, 1925, singing the role of Mařenka in Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Six days after that debut, she returned to the same stage as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata. Her international career advanced rapidly: in 1928 she appeared in Verona as Gilda opposite Giacomo Lauri-Volpi in Rigoletto and at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples as Adina opposite Tito Schipa in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore. The following year she joined the Kroll Opera in Berlin, where her repertoire included Violetta and the title roles of Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. She married Jiří Daubek in 1931 and moved to Liteň, where his family owned the local chateau.

In January 1933, Novotná created the female lead in Jaromír Weinberger's operetta Frühlingsstürme opposite Richard Tauber at the Theater im Admiralspalast in Berlin, a production that became the last new operetta staged in the Weimar Republic. The rise of the Nazi regime forced both her and Tauber to leave Germany. She relocated to Vienna in 1934, where she created the title role in Lehár's Giuditta opposite Tauber, a success that earned her a contract with the Vienna State Opera and the title of Kammersängerin. Before the Anschluss, she also appeared with Tauber at the Vienna State Opera in The Bartered Bride and Madama Butterfly. In 1937 she sang Pamina in the Salzburg Festival production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with the young Georg Solti playing glockenspiel in the orchestra pit.

During World War II, Novotná left Europe, first joining the Civic Light Opera in Los Angeles before settling in New York. She gave concerts for the Czech American community, including a performance at a Sokol Convention in Chicago before a crowd of 60,000. In 1941 she participated in an event marking the centenary of Antonín Dvořák's birth alongside Fritz Kreisler and Harry Burleigh in New York. In 1943 she recorded an album of Czech folk songs with Jan Masaryk, the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia in exile, titled Songs of Lidice, named after the village destroyed by the Nazis.

On January 5, 1940, Novotná made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera as Mimì in Puccini's La bohème, launching a tenure that lasted until 1956. Over the course of 208 appearances at the Met, she performed thirteen roles in total, including Euridice, Violetta, Cherubino, Massenet's Manon, Mařenka, Donna Elvira, Pamina, Octavian, Antonia, Freia, Mélisande, and Prince Orlofsky. Of those 208 performances, 103 were in the breeches roles of Prince Orlofsky, Cherubino, and Octavian. Her farewell performance at the Met took place on January 15, 1956, in the role of Prince Orlofsky.

Novotná appeared on Broadway from 1944 to 1953, with credits including the play Sherlock Holmes and Helen Goes to Troy. Her film career ran parallel to her stage work and included Max Ophüls's 1932 adaptation of The Bartered Bride and a series of other productions spanning from 1926 through 1951. In 1948 she received acclaim for her role as an Auschwitz survivor searching for her young son in The Search, which co-starred Montgomery Clift and featured Ivan Jandl as her son. She appeared again on screen in 1951 in The Great Caruso, starring Mario Lanza.

In 1991, President Václav Havel awarded Novotná the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. That same year she completed her memoirs, My Life in Song, though the English-language edition was not published until 2018. She spent her final years in Vienna. The chateau in Liteň where she once lived with her husband hosts an annual music festival held in her name.