Vera Rózsa
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Vera Rózsa
Education
She started her music education at the age of five. Her parents were teachers and having no baby-sitter at home, they simply took her along to school. Her parents, especially her father, were very musical (he played the violin). Vera Rózsa started to learn music also at an early age, her first instructor being her own father. She started to learn how to play the piano somewhat later.
After graduating from secondary school at the age of fifteen (much earlier than normal), Vera Rózsa began her musical studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She studied conducting first, but later she switched to vocal studies. The composer and conductor Zoltán Kodály was one of her instructors.
Personal life and career
Among Vera Rózsa's first roles as a singer were the part of a Jewish lady in
As she belonged to the Jewish minority of her homeland, she witnessed the tragedy of losing many talented colleagues and other prominent cultural figures in the
After the Second World War Vera Rózsa was a soloist of the
Ms. Rózsa married the Briton Ralph Nordell, whom she had originally met in Budapest when he was serving there with British military intelligence at the end of World War II, in Rome and they moved to Britain in 1954, and she gave birth to a son, David, on 2 August of that year. Vera and Ralph had almost forty years of marriage together, until his death in 1991. In the UK, she began teaching privately in addition to continuing to perform in song recitals for several years. Following an acclaimed performance of
As her career developed, she was invited to give master classes all over the world, including in Israel, France, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Finland, the US, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. She was also a judge in many international singing competitions, including Cardiff, the Queen Elizabeth in Brussels, Athens, and a competition established in her honour in Jerusalem.
As a teacher, she stressed artistry and interpretation rather than vocal pyrotechnics. She was noted for refusing to impose her own style or technique on her students, but insisted on helping them to develop their own musical style, to the extent that judges at singing competitions would comment that if they couldn't pin down the identity of the teacher from a singer's style, then it was probably Vera Rózsa.
Students
Among Vera Rózsa's students were
Awards
- In 1991 Ms Vera Rózsa was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
- In 1992 she was awarded the Gold Medal of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music.
- In 1999 she was named a Freeman of the City of London.
- She has also been made a Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and of the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music, and an honorary member of the Royal College of Music.
Film on Vera Rózsa
- Vera Rózsa – Mother of Stars – a documentary film directed by Tiina-Maija Lehtonen, produced by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) in 1997. (Duration: 50 minutes.)
See also
- Franz Liszt Academy of Music
- Hungarian State Opera House
- Vienna State Opera
- Guildhall School of Music and Drama
- Royal Northern College of Music
- Sarah Walker
- Kiri te Kanawa
- Marie Te Hapuku
- Karita Mattila
- Jyrki Niskanen
- Ileana Cotrubaș
- Agathe Martel
- Music education
- List of Hungarians
External links
- Royal Northern College of Music (Earlier: Royal Manchester College of Music)
- Interview in Hungarian (in Hungarian) (with some photos)
- Short info on the film (scroll down)
- Ms Vera Rózsa at work (photo)
- Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2010.