ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the careers of two Central European singers: Tekla Podleská-Batková (1764–1852) and her foster daughter Kateřina Kometová-Podhorská (1807–1889). Podleská-Batková was one of the most famous German singers of the late eighteenth century. Batková received her education in Leipzig from Johann Adam Hiller, commonly viewed as the father of Singspiel, and was a featured performer during the first season of the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Batková later became a resident singer at the court of Courland and spent one season at the Vienna court opera. She eventually settled in Prague, where she sang in concerts and became a vocal pedagogue. In 1832, Batková expressed her gratitude to Hiller by financing his monument in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, for which the German press celebrated her throughout the nineteenth century. In Prague, Batková also connected with the Czech national circles: in the 1820s, Czech patriotic painter Antonín Machek created her portrait, and in the last decades of her life, the Czech press viewed her as a proponent of the Czech language. Batková also educated Kometová-Podhorská, who became one of the most famous Prague opera singers of the nineteenth century. Podhorská started her career as a German singer but was also active in specifically Czech opera performances. This chapter examines how the biographies of these two Bohemian divas reflect the process in which large portions of the Bohemian cultural elite switched allegiance from German-oriented cosmopolitanism to Czech-centric nationalism. Posthumously, both Batková and Podhorská were mythologised into being heroines of Czech national culture (especially in women’s publications), whereas their ties to Bohemian German culture were ignored
