Josepha Chekova

Josepha Chekova, also rendered as Josefa Chekova and known by her married name Josepha Domansky, was a Czech-American soprano born on 26 May 1900 in New York City to Czech immigrant parents. She died on 25 February 1968 at Christian Science Hospital in Boston at the age of 68. Her husband, concert manager Vladimir Domansky, had preceded her in death by six weeks, passing on 14 January 1968.

Chekova's performing career began in vaudeville, with documented appearances as early as May 1925 at Keith's Theatre in Syracuse, New York, and the Strand Theatre in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Between 1926 and 1927 she was a contracted singer with WRNY radio, where she performed multiple programs of music. In June 1928 she returned to WRNY under engagement by Thomas A. Edison's music company, performing a program of Czech music with the Edison Orchestra. In May 1927 she had appeared in the variety show Oh, Teacher at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago. That October she won a singing competition held by the Bel Canto Studio, Inc. of New York, earning a prize of free vocal training lasting between one and three years along with a trip to Italy. She subsequently studied with Estelle Liebling in New York City. In 1929 she recorded the duet "Love Me Tonight" for the Victor Talking Machine Company alongside singer Dennis King.

Her single Broadway credit came in 1931, when she appeared in the revival of John N. Raphael and Constance Collier's Peter Ibbetson at the Shubert Theatre, holding a minor part within the ensemble. Her professional opera debut followed at the Prague State Opera, where she performed in The Bartered Bride. By 1933 she had become a leading soprano with the New York Opera Company.

Chekova was engaged at Radio City Music Hall beginning in 1934, where her appearances spanned several years. That year she sang works by Rudolf Friml in a stage show that also featured the Rockettes, and in May 1934 she performed the title role in Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly with Edwina Eustis as Suzuki and Alfredo Gandolfi as Sharpless. In 1935 she sang Musetta in Puccini's La bohème at the hall under conductor Ernö Rapée in a performance recorded live for broadcast on NBC Radio, and in 1939 she returned to the venue once more in that same role. She again performed the role of Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly at Radio City Music Hall in 1941.

The 1935–1936 season brought Chekova a touring engagement with the San Carlo Opera Company, during which she performed Nedda in Pagliacci, Marguerite in Faust, and Micaëla in Carmen. Also in 1935, at the Steel Pier Theatre in Atlantic City, she portrayed the title role in Georges Bizet's Carmen and Leonora in Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore. Her association with the Steel Pier Opera Company continued from the mid-1930s into the early 1940s. In 1936 she performed at Aeolian Hall in a program of music by composer Elmo Russ. The following year she starred in a production of Benjamin Godard's La Vivandière at the Robin Hood Dell in Philadelphia, staged by H. Maurice Jacquet's American Opera Company, with additional performances in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1939 she portrayed Leonora in Il trovatore opposite Florence Foster Jenkins as Azucena with the Verdi Club in New York City. She also appeared as a guest artist with opera companies in Washington D.C., Cincinnati, and Chicago. From 1940 to 1942 she served as a leading soprano with Armand Bagarozy's touring Columbia Opera Company, and in 1941 she portrayed Mimi in La bohème with the Rochester Grand Opera Company.

Among Chekova's most distinctive contributions was her work as a translator of opera libretti into English. She translated the original German libretto of Eugene Zador's opera Christopher Columbus, and her translation was used for the work's world premiere on 8 October 1939 at the Center Theatre in New York City. That premiere was presented as a concert performance before a sold-out audience and simultaneously broadcast on the NBC Blue Network program Music Hall of the Air, with Robert Weede in the title role. Her translation was also employed when the Tucson Symphony Orchestra performed the opera in 1956, and it was later recorded by the American Symphony Orchestra under conductor Laszlo Halasz in 1975, with the recording released on the Cambria label in 1997.

In 1948 Chekova undertook a concert tour of Czechoslovakia and was present in the country during the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état. She wrote about her experience of those events in the Victoria Daily Times on 10 March 1948. In 1955 she recorded the duet "Dio Ti Giocondi" from Verdi's Otello with tenor Mario Lanza, a recording subsequently used in the soundtrack of the 1956 film Serenade.