Jarmila Vantuchová

Biography

The mezzo-soprano Jarmila Balážová made her debut at the National Theatre in Prague in the 2020/21 season, in the role of Milli in the production of Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang. Since the 2020/21 season, she has been a member of the Opera Studio within the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava. She studied at the Bratislava Conservatory and the Janáček Academy of Music in Brno, and spent half a year at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy in Warsaw. The winner of the Slovak Bach Society Prize (2015) and the Commendation in the mezzo-soprano category (2016) at the Imrich Godin International Vocal Competition IUVENTUS CANTI in Vráble, she has regularly collaborated with Slovak ensembles specialised in Baroque music, including Il Cuore barocco, Solamente naturali and Musica Aeterna, with the latter of whom she performed in June 2018 in the role of Marco Antonio in J. A. Hasse’s opera Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra. Moreover, she has worked with Ensemble Opera Diversa, the Brno Contemporary Orchestra, Czech Virtuosi, the International Choir Academy Lübeck and L’Armonia Terrena. She has portrayed the lead role of the writer Božena Němcová in Ensemble Opera Diversa’s production of Lenka Nota Foltýnová’s opera Jsem kněžna bláznů (I Am the Princess of Fools), set to Olga Sommerová’s libretto, premiered in 2017 at the Reduta in Brno (2017). Jarmila Balážová sang at the Prague Spring festival in 2018 (as a guest of Kateřina Kněžíková within the Primary Art Schools Open concert), at Smetana’s Litomyšl in 2018 (within Adam Plachetka’s recital) and at the Zlatá pecka festival in Chrudim in 2018 (as Paride in Gluck’s Paride et Elena). She has portrayed two roles in the production of Puccini’s Il trittico at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, and guested as Emilia in Rossini’s Otello, Lola in Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Zuzka in J. B. Foerster’s Eva at the State Opera in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. In October 2019, she made her debut at the National Theatre Brno, performing the role of the Mayor’s Wife (Janáček: Jenůfa), following which she appeared there as Polina (Tchaikovsky: The Queen of Spades) and Kosinská (Janáček: Fate, directed by Robert Carsen, September 2020).