FOR NOVOTNA, A LIFETIME AS DRAMATIC AS AN OPERA PLOT

If you happen to have some pre-War Czech 100-kronen notes around the house, you might notice the engraving of a lovely young girl as a symbol of the republic.

It is Jarmila Novotna, all of 17 and just starting her opera career. She was asked to pose at the time by Tomas Masaryk, first president of Czechoslovakia and, not incidentally, a friend of the family.

A half-dozen decades later, she greets an interviewer at her elegant Manhattan East Side apartment with a firm handshake and a sheaf of handwritten pages chronologically detailing her career.

One of the great soprano beauties of the operatic stage in the ‘30s, ‘40s and early-’50s Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and New York, Novotna also happens to be the Baroness Daubek. She has the bearing, bone structure, skin and manner of the patrician she was born. Now 79, she looks as if she would sit for a portrait by John Singer Sargent at any moment.

Born in Prague, she says she sang as a child when saying her prayers. At 14 she was turned down by the Conservatory as too young, but she continued to study privately. The great Bohemian soprano Emmy Destinn agreed to teach her.

There were no obstacles to her progress. After a few provincial performances she made her debut at the age of 17 at the National Theatre as Marenka in “Bartered Bride” in 1925. With such other parts as Violetta, Rosina, Queen of the Night and Tatiana in “Eugene Onegin,” her success was assured.

On the advice of Masaryk, she went to study with the baritone Mario Sammarco and the conductor Guarnieri in Milan in 1927. In August of 1928 she made her Italian debut at the Arena in Verona as Gilda with Lauri-Volpi as the Duke in “Rigoletto.”

“I was a lyric coloratura in my early youth,” she explains. “As the voice and I matured, the sound became darker and lower.”

Offers from Berlin and Vienna came in, as well as one from Gatti-Casazza at the Met. She turned down Gatti for one reason only: She was in love, and New York was too far away.

Novotna had met the Baron George Daubek, 17 years older than she and scion of one of the great families of Bohemia. He had wanted her to give up her career for him, but relented when his mother, charmed by her future daughter-in-law, gave her blessing.

Berlin was closer than New York, so she made her debut at the Kroll Oper in 1929 as Concepcion in Ravel’s “L’Heure Espagnole,” staged by Gustav Gruendgens. Decades later, incidentally, the same stage director was to serve as the prototype for the anti-hero of the film “Mephisto.”

“George saw to it that I had a duenna, a companion, with me at all times. My German was sketchy and she was a help. But he really wanted to save me ‘problems’ with gentlemen in the theater.”

The two were married in 1931. Their first child, Jarmila, was born the following year.

“Can you imagine what those Berlin days were like?” the soprano asks. “To work with Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, Felix Weingartner, Leo Blech, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Bruno Walter and Erich Wolfgang Korngold as conductors. And then there was Max Reinhardt!”

Probably the foremost stage director of his time, Reinhardt almost robbed the opera world of Novotna. She first worked for him in a production of Offenbach’s “La Belle Helene” in 1931, followed the next year by an Antonia in “Hoffmann” and in Paris the year after that as Rosalinde in “Die Fledermaus.”

She made her 1933 Vienna debut as Butterfly, but Reinhardt begged her to give up music, promising to make her “the greatest actress in the world.” The tempting bait was Olivia in his new production of “Twelfth Night.” The lady turned him down.

By this time political events were moving rapidly. Novotna had returned to Prague for a Beethoven Ninth, celebrating President Masaryk’s birthday. The vocal parts were sung in Czech.

For this transgression the newly installed Nazis in Berlin demanded her ouster from the State Opera, along with Zemlinsky, the conductor. Vienna was only too happy to take the 25-year-old beauty who had become the most popular lyric soprano in Central Europe.

Her long and happy association with Vienna included most of her great parts, Mimi, Gilda, Tatiana, Butterfly, Violetta, all four heroines in “Hoffmann,” and above all, Octavian and Cherubino. Her tall, slender figure made her ideal for these “trouser” roles.

She already had assumed the more mature, ultra-feminine guise of the Countess in “Figaro” for Weingartner, but Walter would think of her only as the boyish Cherubino.

It was in Vienna that Franz Lehar wrote “Giuditta” for Novotna, and she sang the premiere in January, 1934. The big aria, “Meine lippen, sie kuessen so heiss,” became her virtual theme song. The operetta is rarely heard today, but the sexy aria survives as a popular interpolation in many performances of “The Merry Widow.”

During these years she found time to make her debut at the Florence May Festival as Cherubino and at La Scala as Alice in a De Sabata-conducted “Falstaff.” She participated each year from 1935 through 1937 at the Salzburg Festival and it was here that a friendship was formed which was to prove crucial for her future life and career.

Toscanini mounted a new production of “Zauberfloete,” and Novotna was his Pamina. In 1937 it was his last appearance at the festival (he refused to return after the Nazis took Austria). Only two years later he would provide the pretext to get her and her family out of Europe.

At this same festival another man appeared who threatened to take Jarmila Novotna away from opera. Max Reinhardt introduced her to the visiting MGM czar, Louis B. Mayer. She had made several films in Germany and Austria and Mayer was interested in this beautiful singer who could also act.

He drove her to Budapest where a Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy movie was showing so that she could see exactly what he had in mind. Despite the fact he offered her $1,000 a week for five years, Novotna declined when he told her she would have to give up opera.

For the World’s Fair in 1939, Toscanini had agreed to conduct a concert version of “Traviata” and asked Novotna to be his Violetta. She arrived in New York on March 15, the day Hitler marched into Prague. The performances were canceled when overflights could not be rerouted away from the open-air auditorium at Flushing Meadows--the Maestro would not compete with airplanes.

Before returning to Europe, however, Novotna agreed to make her American debut in September in San Francisco as Butterfly.

“Miss Novotna,” wrote one visiting critic from New York, “has given proof of being not only a singer, but also a musician and interpreter of true dramatic instinct. . . . There is grace, warmth and communicative feeling in everything she does.”

With Toscanini’s help she was able to get her husband and two children (her son, George, had been born the previous October) into the country. The land and business holdings of her family were promptly confiscated by the Nazis.

After San Francisco, Novotna made her New York debut at Carnegie Hall with Toscanini in the Beethoven Ninth. The conductor took her to meet Edward Johnson, who engaged her for a Met debut as Mimi, Jan. 5, 1940, with Jussi Bjoerling as Rodolfo.

The debut role was supposed to have been “Bartered Bride,” but in those days it was sung in German. Novotna balked: “How could I sing our national opera in the language of the people occupying my country?”

Seasons later, when the Smetana opera was finally given, the Met commissioned an English version. This Novotna sang.

The soprano’s special abilities as a Verdian were first disclosed when she did her first Violetta in “La Traviata.” Olin Downes in the New York Times called it a “crowning achievement.” Novotna, he concluded, “bestows upon the role its full meaning and power. (She) is a great Violetta.”

More revealing, perhaps, were the comments by Henry Simon regarding the operatic lady of the camellias in his “Treasury of Grand Opera”:

“Dumas said, ‘She had a native distinction. She dressed with taste and walked gracefully, almost with nobility.’ Among the score or so leading ladies I have seen undertake the part during the past 20 years, only Jarmila Novotna has created any such illusion. Lucrezia Bori came near to it, though she was a little small, and Greta Garbo was convincing on the screen. But then she did not have to sing.”

Despite her enormous success, Novotna sang this part only 11 times in New York. Why didn’t she fight for more?

“It’s not my nature,” she smiled. “Who wins when you are unpleasant and create scenes? I was quite happy with my career as it was.”

Though her Met career involved such grateful challenges as Manon, Pamina, Euridice, Antonia and Giulietta in “Hoffmann,” even Freia in “Rheingold” and Melisande, she probably is best remembered for her Octavian in “Der Rosenkavalier” and Cherubino in “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

Rise Stevens was Novotna’s friend, colleague and, in the roles of Octavian and Cherubino, her most prominent rival. Today, both ladies emphatically deny any negative aspects to that rivalry.

The American mezzo-soprano describes the Novotna effect this way:

“I first saw Jar in Salzburg in 1937. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen on stage. The voice was medium size, what I would call typically Viennese with little vibrato and a marvelous shimmer to the sound, especially on top. And she was a great, elegant actress.”

Why did she never sing the Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier,” a part seemingly ideal both musically and dramatically?

“No one ever asked me. They always wanted to keep me in pants.”

During these years, Novotna left one of her loveliest legacies, the recording of Czech folk songs accompanied at the piano by an old friend, Jan Masaryk. Son of the former president and the foreign minister of the Czech government in exile, he was an accomplished amateur musician.

When the war was over, the soprano returned to the Prague National Theatre for “Bartered Bride” and “Eugene Onegin” in 1946. Her husband regained his lands and businesses, but he foresaw political problems.

In 1947 film director Fred Zinnemann telephoned from Zurich. He was making an MGM film, “The Search,” with the young Montgomery Clift. He wanted Novotna for the role of the mother seeking her child in the ruins of post-war Europe. The diva’s husband thought the part unglamorous for the American public, but Jan Masaryk urged her to do it. The film was a great artistic and financial success.

President Truman had announced the Marshall Plan. After being summoned to Moscow and told brutally by Stalin that Czechoslovakia would not be allowed to participate, Masaryk returned in despair to Prague.

He and his longtime companion, the author Marcia Davenport, went immediately to the Daubek castle outside the city. “How could I ever have trusted him?” the soprano remembers him saying of the Soviet dictator.

A short time later, Masaryk was dead. He had fallen from a window in his office. Whether he was pushed or jumped remains a mystery, although Novotna notes it seemed unlikely that such a large man would choose such a small window for suicide.

The Communist takeover was completed in 1948. Once again the Daubek properties were confiscated.

When Rudolf Bing took over the Met in 1950, Novotna was part of the old company. She says he had never quite forgiven her for canceling some Edinburgh performances when he was manager there. She retained Octavian, added Giulietta plus Orlofsky in “Fledermaus,” but her appearances became increasingly rare. Her last performance at the Met was an Orlofsky, Jan. 15, 1956.

What does she think of singers today?

Discreet silence.

Singers of the past?

Readily and admiringly, she mentions Lotte Lehmann, Tito Schipa, Richard Tauber, Lawrence Tibbett and Bjoerling as favorites.

“What’s missing today,” she reflects, “is personality, presence. The voices are there, but little else. You can learn superficial things, even charm, but you can’t learn personality.

“The directors are at fault also. Reinhardt never wanted marionettes. If you were good, he was flexible. When you gestured, you had to mean something. He wanted blood and soul. His director’s book is still used for ‘Jedermann’ in Salzburg today.

“Also the audience seems to have changed. They don’t seem to know the pieces so well, otherwise how could they put up with something like that recent ‘Gioconda’ in Carnegia Hall with Ghena Dimitrova, Piero Cappuccilli and Paul Plishka standing up there bellowing. It was like a sports event, not opera.

“The Met now is like a factory, not a company. During the war, perhaps because of it, we were all together, happy and friends.”

Asked about the rumors of a romance with Toscanini, Novotna is impatient.

“Bidu Sayao (her soprano colleague at the Met) swears we had an affair, but it’s not true. It was a great, good friendship. My God, he was 73 years old! Once during a very good rehearsal of “La Demoiselle Elue” he was so excited he jumped up from the piano and kissed me on the mouth. But it was only the music. I never even told my daughter that story. But people will think what they want.

“Of course, Ezio Pinza made advances. Didn’t he with everyone?” The eyes narrow, the jaw is set.

“I think he was more interested in satisfying himself, not a real relationship with a woman. I remember, after he broke with Elisabeth Rethberg, there was a ‘Figaro’ rehearsal and she was singing ‘Porgi amor.’ Pinza walked into the room and Rethberg’s voice choked, she couldn’t continue.”

As if to signal that the subject is closed, she tilts her head, smiles and announces, “I have chilled champagne. Shall we have some?”

Baron Daubek died in 1981. Novotna lives in the same apartment building as her daughter. They are very close. She is asked often to teach, but she refuses.

Every summer she still returns to Prague to visit her elder sister. This year they went together to a nearby spa for the cure.

“People warn me about the effects of Chernobyl. But I understand everything is safe. Besides, you can’t go through your life afraid. It’s the same with the terrorists--if they force you to change your life, they’ve won, haven’t they?”

Like many a retired diva, Novotna is working on her memoirs.

“I can’t think of the bad things. One is fortunate if one forgets them. I have had a wonderful life, artistically and personally. I have been associated with the giants of my time. I shared a great love with my husband. I have beautiful children and grandchildren. What more can one ask?”

“The memoirs will be a bit old-fashioned, I suppose. You know--’and they lived happily ever after.’ ”

One likes to think all fairy-tale princesses will end up like that.