Franck, Panis Angelicus

I had something else scheduled as today’s Friday Performance Pick, but it can wait. I want to note instead the passing of soprano Patricia Janečková. She died of breast cancer on October 1 at the age of 25.

Janečková seems to have had a significant following in part due to her recordings outside the operatic repertoire, but she was highly regarded as an upcoming opera star. I featured one of her performances in this series back in 2019—Frühlingsstimmen by Johann Strauss Jr.

Born in the German town of Münchberg, she grew up in the Czech Republic and studied at the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava. Her career received a major boost when in 2014 she won the International Sacred Music Competition in Rome, a competition devoted exclusively to the solo repertoire of sacred music. She was married just a few months ago.

An obituary appears in Opera Wire.

César Franck (1822-1890) wrote Panis Angelicus (“Bread of Heaven”) in 1872 as part of his Mass for Three Voices. We discussed some of his biography in an earlier post on his Violin Sonata in A Major.