Biografia

She maintained long associations with the Frankfurt Opera and the San Francisco Opera, and was on the roster of singers at the National Theatre in Prague.

Cervená starred as Emilia Marty in Karel Capek's play The Makropulos Case, directed by Robert Wilson, at the National Theatre in Prague from the production's debut in November 2010.

After a nine-year absence, Cervená returned to San Francisco in 1980 to portray Countess Waldner in Arabella, Flora in La traviata, Mamma Lucia in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Starenka Buryjovka in Jenufa.

Cervená studied voice with Robert Rozner and Lydia Wegner-Salmowá in her home city before beginning her career performing with an operetta ensemble in Prague.

Her mother died in a Communist jail in 1948, the year of a Communist coup-d'etat in Czechoslovakia. Cervená learned about her mother's death and with the help of a pathologist recovered her mother's body to secretly bury her in her family grave in Prague.