How Much Can You Miss Someone You Never Met?

Her voice lit up the dark places, and now she’s gone.

In the past year, I lost three people who meant a lot to me.

My friend Mari died of breast cancer a year ago at the age of 59. She was remarkable, with boundless generosity of spirit that drew people in whether they wished it or not. She was a teacher, philosopher, and author. She had a special talent for making abstruse academic concepts relatable for normal folks like most of us.

At her memorial, I discovered just how wide a net she had cast during her life: Dozens of people came from all over the world to pay their respects, and hundreds more attended remotely. Many of them shared stories of how she had made their lives better, even saved them, either through her friendship or through her writings.

One of the things she and I shared was a love of music. One day, I introduced her to a band she had never heard of. They became her favorite band and a source of strength when she fought to stay alive. It may have been the most important thing I did to help her.

My Aunt Sylvia died earlier this year. I wrote about her here.

The Coolest Aunt in the World

When I was a kid, she was a member of the cool, hip crowd in New York. It was the late 60’s. She introduced me to a lot of the music that would shape my teen years and beyond, as well as exposing me firsthand to the pop culture of the Village at the height of the Woodstock era.

So, we, too, were brought together by music and family bonds. Sylvia was 95 when she died, and she was philosophical about it in her last weeks. She knew she had gotten the most out of her time here. Now, when I listen to Cream, Jefferson Airplane, or the Blues Project, I think of her and how she opened my world up in a way my parents never could.

In between those two deaths, I lost another special person, one whom I had never actually met. I say “I,” but the whole world lost her. Yet this loss feels personal. It was the hardest one to write about. That may owe itself to the terribly cruel age at which she was taken. Her name was Patricia Burda Janečkova, and she was only 25 when she died.

I debated publishing this. I decided to do so because, setting aside my feelings of sadness and loss, the world should hear this voice. She was awe-inspiring and getting more so with every performance.

In an age when so many young people say they feel confused and demotivated, she showed that focus and passion for an art are worth it. I hope you find the time to play all of these, maybe one a day—like medicine for the soul.

The very first music article I published was about some of my favorite opera singers. Those included Anna Netrebko, Lucia Popp, and Barbara Bonney, but the highlight of the article was Janečková. She was 23 at the time.

Classical and opera singers are normally not considered “ready” before their mid-30s. Still, she belonged on that list, for good reason: Many saw her as opera’s next great star in the making. I was dazzled from the first time I heard her.

She first caught people’s attention when she won a Czech talent show at the age of 12. I am usually skeptical of shows like this because of all the manipulation that goes on behind the scenes and the tendency to elevate merely talented youngsters to the status of “prodigies.” Janečková was one of the rare examples of someone who met and exceeded all expectations.

She performed in various productions for the next two years, then disappeared. It later turned out she was doing some serious training. When she reappeared, she had been transformed. I only discovered her after that transformation, so it took me awhile to reconstruct her history. This is a series of snapshots from that story.

I’ve arranged these clips chronologically, not in the order I discovered them. The first video features her winning performance in that original talent show.

“Once upon a time in the West”

This is one of Ennio Morricone’s classic movie themes from the movie of the same name. Remember, Janečková was 12 years old at the time of this video. She has an amazingly pure voice with impeccable control.

“Once upon a time in the West” (2)

Shortly before she went into stealth mode, Janečková performed as the guest artist for the finals of an Eastern European beauty pageant, “Miss Renata.” She is 14 here. Again, she is performing “Once Upon a Time in the West,” which has become her signature song. It is hard to miss the moment when it dawns on the contestants that they have been completely upstaged.

Janečková spent three years out of the spotlight, going through intensive vocal coaching. This was, of course, timed to correspond with puberty, with its attendant physical capacity and vocal character changes. When she reappeared, it was as though she had undergone a true metamorphosis, except that butterflies are fragile, and there didn’t seem anything at all fragile about Patricia.

Here are two clips from her first major appearance upon her re-emergence. She is now 17, still extremely young for an opera singer (as mentioned earlier, singers are generally not given serious roles until they are in their 30s.)

“Les oiseaux dans la charmille” (Jacques Offenbach — Les contes d’ Hoffmann)

This is a doubly difficult piece to sing because the performer is miming at the same time. The role requires serious physical fitness. It is typically assigned to young sopranos with a lighter, brighter tone. She has that, yet she also has a full timbre for her age. Her control is rock solid.

“Meine Lippen” (Franz Lehár — Giuditta)

One more from the same show. It rivals Anna Netrebko’s rendition for sheer hotness, while not being as scandalous. That a 17-year-old can pull this off is crazy, but as we saw in the previous clip, she has an innate sense of drama.

Forget all the pathetic titty-flashing and pole-humping so prevalent in pop music today.

This is how you burn the house down!

“Laudate Dominum” (W. A. Mozart , KV 339) (2017)

Mozart wrote music that is what we call today “technical.” Janečková was known in particular for her agility and precision. Here, she is performing one of his famous liturgical pieces. The original arrangement includes a choir, but this version is stripped down to focus on the soprano soloist.

Janečková soon became a fixture on the European “opera lite” circuit, playing festivals, music halls, and solo gigs. At 21, she also took on her first full opera roles, though I have not found official footage of those performances.

“Frühlingsstimmen” (Johann Strauss II; Obecní dům Smetana Hall Prague) (Dec. 2019)

Here is Janečková, now 21, featuring in a Christmas concert. Best comment: “Patricia knocked the conductor off his feet before singing a note.”

“Song to the Moon”, from “Rusalka” (Antonín Dvořák)

Do you have a pick for the most beautiful opera aria? “Song to the Moon” is probably mine. I liked it as a kid before I knew what Opera was.

There are many versions to choose from. My favorite version is this one by Lucia Popp. There is something about the sweetness and effortless depth she brings to it. In a weird foreshadowing of Janečková’s story, Popp died young of ovarian cancer.

Here is Patricia’s version. It took place during the pandemic, so there was no audience.

“Ave Maria” (Gounod/J.S. Bach)

This is my favorite of the ‘big three’ “Ave Maria”s (Gounod/Bach, Vavilov, Schubert). Janečková and Vilém Veverka (oboe) turn in a magical performance.

They recorded this in early 2022, shortly before she received her fatal cancer diagnosis. Something about the timing of this spooks me just a bit..

…….

Finally, here is a video tribute to Patricia made by a fan. I still find it surreal to watch such recent footage of her as a child, knowing that she is already gone. In her short time, she became a star, dazzled the music world, and then left us. Astronomers tell us that the brightest stars burn out the soonest. In this case, they were right.

Warning: Parts of this are hard to get through.