#me.Rom: “In 1988 they let my children and I leave Czechoslovakia to visit my husband in Washington, D.C. and we never went back” says opera singer and producer Helena Šafářová
“My husband legally travelled from Czechoslovakia to the United States on a fellowship with the National Institute of Health. At first they wouldn’t let me bring the children to visit him, but in 1988 they did, so we left and never came back. Because of that, my husband was not allowed to return, not even for his father’s funeral,” says Helena Šafářová (72), who has taught Czech to diplomats, worked as a bank manager and performed as a mezzo soprano in musicals during her life in the USA.
Helena Šafářová (PHOTO: František Bikár)
Helena spent her childhood in Moravia living with her grandfather and later started her studies in Prague in Cultural Educational Work, after which she began working for the famous production agency Pragokoncert. “We arranged concerts and shows for Czechoslovak performers and arranged the contracts with the producers,” she told ROMEA TV.
After emigrating and settling her family in the state of Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C., she had to find work fast, as her husband’s income was not enough. “My husband had a stipend, not a salary that could cover the needs of four people, right, so I began working too at the National Institute of Health. We lived there 10 years and my two daughters attended school there. I began teaching the Czech language at the State Department, which is something like an Interior Ministry,” Šafářová reminisces.
They waited almost 10 years for a green card and the successful scientific career of her husband, Jiří, eventually redirected the family to San Francisco, where Helena got a job in a bank. “I began working behind the counter and worked my way up to a managerial position. I was a loan officer. Then my husband was offered a job at a university in Cleveland, so I enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Music and started focusing much more on singing,” Šafářová describes her path to the world of music.
“I’d taken private lessons in California, where I started studying singing, but then when the children were at university I had the time to pay attention to myself. I performed in four opera productions for the Cleveland Opera and in several musical roles. Several years ago I started producing my own shows, since 2015 I’ve produced ‘Back to Broadway’, where several soloists, 10 or 12, basically sing hits from famous musicals,” says Šafářová, revealing that she has production plans for the next 10 years.
Šafářová admits her beginnings in the USA were not easy and that she lived through some very demanding moments. “To be honest, we had a lot of problems and worries in the beginning in America when it came to putting down roots here and raising our family somehow, and it was not easy. Sometimes it was complicated, so I didn’t have the time to follow what was happening in the Czech Republic, because it wasn’t my home anymore. I had to make this my home,” she explains.
Today she still visits the Czech Republic to see her mother, her siblings, her sister-in-law and her friends, but she is certain that the opportunity to emigrate was an enormous piece of luck. “My husband had a job and still does that he could never have had in Czechoslovakia. The children have graduated from schools they could never have attended there. I have had opportunities for self-realization that I would never have had there. I can’t imagine that, if I were the age I am today in Prague, that I would be as productive as I am now. I have plans for the next 10 years,” the energetic woman says.
She and her husband live between Cleveland and New York City, where one of her daughters also lives. However, she still considers Prague to be the most beautiful city in the world.
According to Šafářová, Romani people and their culture are all but unknown in the USA and the notion prevails that being Roma is just a lifestyle or a way of dressing. Her daughter, Petra Gelbart, is quite active and has long dedicated herself to Romani subject matter in Europe.
“[Petra] is basically studying it. She learned she is half-Romani and she feels she has a certain duty toward her Romani family members or other Romani people to contribute something, because she has an education that makes more things possible for her than for the Roma who are not educated and do not have the good luck to be able to study in America at Harvard, for example, as she did. It’s good she’s doing that, it’s good that she enjoys it and that she has the time for it, and it’s basically her life’s mission,” Šafářová says.
