Helena Tattermuschová (born January 28, 1933[1]) is a Czech lyric coloratura soprano, known chiefly for her character roles in the operas of Mozart and Janáček.
Tattermuschová was born to a large working-class family in the Libeň district of Prague. She received her earliest vocal training from her school choirmaster, Václav Matoušek.[2] Upon finishing municipal school, she studied vocal performance with Vlasta Linhartová at the Academy of Music in Prague from 1948 to 1953.[3] She also studied at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Jaromíra Tomášková.[4]
She performed in the University Art Ensemble of Charles University from 1950 to 1954. She won the second prize in the Prague Spring singing competition in 1954 and the same year was named a laureate in the soprano category of the international competition named for legendary Czech opera stars Emmy Destinn (Ema Destinnová) and Karel Burian in Prague.[5]
Upon completion of her studies, she was engaged by the Zdenek Nejedlý Theater of the Ostrava Opera (now the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre), where she made her stage debut as Musetta in 1955. By 1956, she was a member of the Prague National Theatre opera company where she continued to sing well into the 1980s.[6] She possessed a high lyric soprano voice that tended to cast her into either “daughter” roles or youthful trouser roles for many years into her career.
That distinctively girlish vocal quality inclined Tattermuschová to the soubrette characters in Mozart operas, notably Papagena in The Magic Flute, Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. She also took on the coloratura roles of Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto.
Tattermuschová’s singular contribution to opera was her body of work singing the Czech repertoire on the national and international stage as well as on recordings. She enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in 1970 in the title role of Vixen Sharp-Ears from Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, which she subsequently recorded.[7] The film of that production went on to be awarded the Charles Cros Academy Grand Prix, the Golden Record from Japan and the Prague Spring Award.[8]
Her youthful voice uniquely suited Tattermuschová to the key role of the boy Aljeja in the nearly all-male cast of Janáček’s From the House of the Dead (performed at the 1964 Edinburgh Festival). She was also Krista in The Makropulos Affair.
In addition to her Janáček roles, Tattermuschová sang in the nationalist Czech operas of Smetana and Dvořák. Her stage roles in Smetana included the servant girl Barče in The Kiss, the Councillor’s daughter Blaženka in The Secret and the merry widow Karolina in The Two Widows. In Dvořák’s operas, she was the kitchen boy Turnspit in Rusalka and the schoolmaster’s daughter Terinka in The Jacobin. Outside of Czechoslovakia, she appeared as a guest artist at opera houses in Barcelona, Brussels, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Naples, Venice and Sofia.
From 1977 to 1991, Tattermuschová taught opera vocal performance at the Prague Conservatory. She received a lifetime achievement prize from the Thalia Awards in 2013.
