The Czech opera singer and mezzo-soprano Sona Cervena is dead. The chamber singer died on Sunday at the age of 97 in her native city of Prague, as the Prague National Theater announced.
After initial successes in her home country, Cervena went to the GDR in 1958 to the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden. After the Wall was built, she fled to the West and found new engagements at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Frankfurt Opera and the San Francisco Opera House. She made numerous guest appearances in Western Europe.
Her role spectrum ranged from Carmen in the opera of the same name to Ulrica in Verdi’s “Ein Masked Ball” and Brangäne in Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”.
Cervena received numerous awards, including the Czech Medal of Merit and the honorary title “Lady of Czech Culture”. Just last September, shortly after her 97th birthday, she performed in the Lateran Basilica in Rome at a concert on the occasion of the Czech Republic’s then EU Council Presidency. Her memoirs were published in 1999 under the title “Homesickness Forbidden – My Piece of Theater and World History”. She also wrote a biography of her grandfather, Vaclav Frantisek Cerveny, a well-known instrument maker in the 19th century.
Biography, in Czech
