Janku, Hana

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Janků, Hana

Janků, Hana, Czech soprano; b. Brno, Oct. 25, 1940; d. Vienna, April 28, 1995. She studied with Jaroslav Kvapil in Brno, making her operatic debut there as the Countess in Novák’s Lucerna in 1959; later sang with the Prague National Theater Opera. She made her first appearance at Milan’s La Scala in 1967 as Turandot; appeared regularly at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin (from 1970). In 1973 she sang Tosca at her Covent Garden debut in London. She also made guest appearances at the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Hamburg State Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. In addition to the Czech repertory, she was also known for such roles as Gioconda, Elsa, Kundry, Desdemona, and Ariadne.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire