Vaclav Talich soprano dies at 98
mainOur Czech pals at Operaplus report the death of soprano Miloslava Fidlerová, a stalwart of Prague’s National Theatre for four decades.
Hired by chief conductor Vaclav Talich while still a student in September 1941, she went on to star in the first opera performance after the German defeat in May 1945 and remained a favourite of Prague audiences until her retirement in 1978.
long life and career, well-lived. She was almost as indestructible as Martha Moedl, who never retired at all. One of Fidlerova’s colleagues in Prague must have been the baritone Oskar (?) Hruska, whose surname I’m told appropriately for his shape means pear, who sang the Dutchman in Heidelberg’s tiny municipal opera with lantern-slide instant phantom ship every week. He’s in the Naxos “Bartered Bride’.
Vaclav Talich rings many bells for his pre-war yeoman Slavonic Dances with the the Czech Philharmonic. How fitting that he and Fidlerova returned to their old posts after the war for more years of music-making.