Born Emilie Kittlová into an affluent Prague family, by the age of twelve she was considered a child prodigy on violin and at thirteen her remarkable voice held such promise that she begun to study singing under the great singing coach Mme Loewe-Destinn, whose name she later adopted. Possessed of the ability to learn a piece of music virtually on first hearing, she acquired a solid vocal method so rapidly that her teacher considered her ready for a debut at twenty.
Following her phenomenally successful debut - in Berlin in 1898 - Richard Strauss asked her to create the eponymous role of Salome. That caused a sensation, setting the tone for the start of her career. She was soon a favourite of Cosima Wagner and in 1901 created the role of Senta in The Flying Dutchman in Bayreuth. Giacomo Puccini chose her to sing the title role in Madama Butterfly at the London premiere in 1905 and wrote La Fanciulla Del West with her in mind. That premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1910, with the “divine Emmy” singing alongside Caruso, Gilly and Toscanini.
Destinn’s close links with the Royal Opera House in London began in May 1904, when she made her first appearance as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. During the following eleven consecutive seasons there she made 231 appearances in 18 operas. She performed her legendary Aida at the coronation of King George V in 1911.
Destinn also wrote plays, novels, short stories, librettos, and poetry; painted on canvas and porcelain; and translated and composed songs. She wrote her first play at the age of 16, and by 18 had followed that with three more. Her sharp wit, sense of humour and ability to write vividly about any situation is evident in her vast correspondence. She spoke five languages fluently and wrote her literary work in Czech and German.
Although she travelled the world she loved her country above all. Her fierce patriotism, however, had a fateful effect on her career. During the First World War she returned home from America against the advice of her friends, carrying with her messages for the Czech resistance, a move which almost cost her life. In Prague, she refused to sing for the Austro-Hungarian troops and as a result was placed under a house arrest for two years. Even this did not break her spirit, and people travelled from all over the country to hear her sing at impromptu open-air concerts. After the armistice in 1918 she gave numerous benefit concerts to help alleviate the suffering of her countrymen, and after the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia, she became one of the most potent symbols of national liberation, a deeply revered and important figure in Czech history.
Her singing career, however, never recovered from her enforced absence from the world stages. Her last public concert was at the Queen’s Hall in London in 1928, to mark the tenth anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s independence. After a brief and unfulfilling marriage to a young air force pilot, Josef Halsbach, her final years were spent in isolation and penury. She died alone, at the age of 52. (quoted from The Emnmy Destinn Foundation)
Condensed from John Steane’s chapter on Emmy Destinn in Singers of the Century, Volume 2:
There are milestones on the road to extinction. For singers, the first is retirement; the second, death; and the third the death of the last generation that heard them. In my youth her memory haunted the corridors of Covent Garden, where aged heads would nod reflectively to the tune of “Ah, but you should have heard Destinn.” The last opportunity to hear her came in 1919, but for years afterwards her Aida and Butterfly set the standard at which other singers were admonished to aim and to which they would never attain.Speaking of Destinn’s many extant recordings, Steane observes:Alee Robertson explained that Melba had a cold perfection, while Destinn’s singing was passionate, very human, and, for that matter, perfect too. “She lives vividly in my memory,” he wrote in his autobiography (More than Music, London, 1961): “the one and only perfect interpreter of Butterfly, Tosca, Minnie, Aida and Senta.”
Right from the start, in 1904, the critics recognised an excellence that had all the potential for greatness. The Daily Telegraph reported on her debut as Donna Anna: “She has a powerful and well-controlled voice, filling easily the ample spaces of our opera house and satisfying the ear by its roundness and timbre.” Two nights later, as Nedda in Pagliacci, she confirmed this first impression with “beauty of delivery and dramatic truth”, to which they might have added evidence of versatility, especially when her next role was to be Elsa in Lohengrin. Her Nedda appears to have been something special. When she returned to the part in 1906, the Times critic wrote: “This fine artist is always splendid in everything she does, but in Nedda she surpasses herself; quick, sensitive, and alive to her fingertips, she sang and acted last night to perfection, playing with a passionate intensity and a sense of beauty that are rarely found combined in opera singers.” She was probably in her absolute prime during these years.
The greatest thrill of an operatic lifetime might be the Nile Scene in Aida when Destinn sang with Caruso and Dinh Gilly. Most fondly remembered of all were the high As, pianissimo, which would appear in the air as if from nowhere and would then float effortlessly to the back of the gallery. There was never again, for her admirers, anything quite like it.
Now, sadly, the modern listener who goes to Destinn’s records to recapture all this tends to come away disappointed. The famous “floating” notes are there but inaccessible: we hear them but cannot, except with an almighty tug on the imagination, capture what was heard at Covent Garden. The old recording in the box-like acoustics produces a pipey sound, just ever so slightly flat. At full voice she sounds more convincingly herself, though the ’self’ may not be quite what is expected. Sometimes on lower middle-notes there seems to be something dangerously like wobble, though elsewhere there has probably never been a “straighter” voice, or one more firmly ruled. As for expression, that too is present, but not subtlety: direct, passionate, but elementary. Hearing four or five arias in succession, one is likely to emerge in a bewildered mood, perplexed by sounds in which it is hard to take pleasure, yet haunted by something urgently individual to which one may have to return.The answer lies with that last word. It is a case where familiarity breeds, not exactly respect but more an affectionate fascination. The voice-character is immensely strong, its timbre concentrated, almost in the way of a baby’s crying; there are times when it sounds thick and even lazy, and yet even then it is liable to blaze forth with a passionate energy. Therein lies the fascination.