- Voice
Vera Rózsa followed her time on stage with a distinguished career as a voice teacher. Raised in Budapest by her musical family, she studied at that city's Franz Liszt Academy originally intending to become a conductor, though she switched to singing due to a weakness in composition and counterpoint. During World War II she hid in the Swedish Embassy where she worked providing false travel documents for her fellow Hungarian Jews and was instrumental in saving a number of lives, though her own husband, composer Laszlo Weiner, died in a work camp. Miss Rozsa suffered lung damage from pneumonia during the war which forced her to develop the improved breathing techniques that prolonged her performing career and were later to increase her value as a teacher.
She made her debut in 1945 with the Budapest State Opera as Hansel in Humperdinck's "Hansel und Gretel", but quickly moved-on to the Vienna State Opera where she remained until 1951. In Vienna she sang such roles as a Jewish Woman in Handel's "Judas Maccabaeus" and Cherubino in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", though she was discovering that her pulmonary problems made lieder and oratorio easier for her than staged opera. Moving to England in 1954, she continued singing for another 20 years, developing a particular affinity for the songs of Franz Schubert, though she was gradually becoming a much sought after vocal maven.
Originally associated with the Royal College of Music in Manchester, she soon transferred her base to London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama and to her London home. Over the years she gave counsel to such noted artists as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Ileana Cotrubas, and Sarah Walker, often instructing not only young singers but established stars needing help with a specific problem. Active within London's Hungarian community and a 1992 recipient of the Gold Medal of the Franz Liszt Academy, she was fully a part of her adopted land, being designated Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1989.
She teaches at the Académie musicale de Villecroze in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995 and 1997.