the times |Monday November 52012 51 Register GeraldineMucha Composerwho with herCzech husbandsurvivedpersecutionbythe Prague authorities andcarriedaflamefor herartistfather-in-law ROMAN VONDROUS /CTK There were not many expatriate Brit- Victoria and Albert Museum in ons in communist Czechoslovakia in London in the early 1960s helped to re- the 1950s and 1960s. But the composer vive international interest in Mucha’s Geraldine Mucha was prominent art. But the Soviet-led invasion of among them. She had met and married Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress pol- the writer Jiri Mucha while he was in itical reform changed the situation exile in Britain during the war and again. And when new restrictions were went back to live with him in Prague in threatened by the communist author- 1945. ities on the family’s ability to travel Ger- There they suffered persecution due aldine decided to move back to Britain to their Western links and were caught in the 1970s —their son John had up in the paranoid atmosphere of already emigrated there. Czechoslovak Stalinism. But she She lived mainly in the Scottish High- worked as acomposer with Czech musi- lands, visiting Prague occasionally. Jiri cians and the couple also strove to sus- was in due course able to obtain visas to tain the memory of Jiri’s father, the art- visit them and organise more inter- ist Alphonse Mucha, whose work national exhibitions, especially when ranged from famous Art Nouveau thea- the success of one in Tokyo in 1983 trical posters from fin de siècle Paris to alerted the authorities in Prague to the epic paintings of Slav history. Geraldine composed potential hard-currency earnings of a After aperiod living back in Britain to take her mind off “Mucha boom”. Geraldine Mucha returned to Prague After the “velvet revolution” against after the revolution against communist her husband in jail communist rule in Prague in 1989 rule in 1989, and was able to see the Geraldine returned to live in aplace establishment of aMucha trust, found- this is mine, and I’m aBritish subject!” she still regarded as “home”. Jiri died in ation and museum there, as well as The police, who “hadn’t expected that 1991 but she resumed her musical activ- continuing her composing career. ...became uneasy” and left without ities and continued with her son to She was born in 1917 to musical confiscating the art. press for greater recognition of parents. Her mother was asinger as The family refused to sell any of the Alphonse Mucha in his homeland. was her father whose voice was dam- Mucha collection despite their circum- After prolonged, often frustrating, ne- aged by gas while fighting in the First stances. For Geraldine, sustaining life gotiation with various bodies, aMucha World War. He became aprofessor at with ayoung son and very little money Trust and Foundation were established the Royal Academy of Music in was often difficult. She edited for a and, working with aSwiss entrepre- London and spotted his daughter’s state publishing house while living in neur, aPrague museum. She was espe- musical talent at an early age. “He the country where food was cheaper cially keen to promote Mucha’s wider noticed,” she recalled “that Isat at the and more plentiful. And she composed work, not only the Art Nouveau post- piano more or less as soon as Icould sit in her spare time “to take my mind off ers which had achieved such global pop- up and ...started improvising.” Jiri in jail”. ularity. “Posters weren’t his main inter- She went on to study at the Royal Her work was varied, ranging from est,” she pointed out. “He was far more Academy herself. But her life changed pieces for solo instruments to ballets interested in painting.” dramatically with achance meeting and song cycles. She often used motifs There were other testing episodes in while visiting Leamington Spa in 1941. prompted by her Scottish and Orcad- the last phase of her life, including a Waiting to enter aparty she met a ian ancestry, including asuite based on claim to rights over part of the Mucha young man in aFrench uniform, who Macbeth first performed in Prague in estate brought by adaughter Jiri turned out to be an exile from the Nazi- the mid-1960s. Among those perform- Mucha had outside marriage, and spec- occupied Czech lands fighting with the ing her orchestral work was the Czech ulation —rejected by the family — Allies against Germany. Jiri Mucha Philharmonic, which recorded her that contacts Jiri Mucha had had with was awriter and son of afamous artist, piano concerto. communist authorities and their secret though Geraldine admitted that, at the After her husband was released in police ultimately amounted to active time, “I had never heard of Alphonse the mid-1950s and the political atmos- collaboration with the regime. Mucha.” phere relaxed during the 1960s the Those who met Geraldine Mucha in They were married and went to live Muchas began to stage small-scale her nineties were struck, however, by in Prague after the war, initially with Alphonse Mucha exhibitions — her continued vivacity and energy; she Alphonse Mucha’s widow and sister Aposter by Alphonse Mucha, whose work Geraldine refused to part with though much of his work, such as epic was still composing music and organis- (he had died in 1939 soon after interro- depictions of Slav history, had already ing for the Mucha cause. gation by the Nazis). But as the commu- eventually accused of espionage, brutal- Geraldine responded courageously. fallen out of cultural fashion in Czecho- She is survived by her son John nists took control of Czechoslovakia in ly interrogated for months in Prague When the secret police arrived at their slovakia before the war and the post- Mucha. 1948, those with links to the West were and then sent to the notorious forced Prague flat to confiscate Jiri’s property, war communist authorities always re- treated with great suspicion. The labour camps at Jáchymov, where the including many Alphonse Mucha garded him with suspicion if not out- Geraldine Mucha, composer, was born on Muchas were ejected from the family communists used political prisoners to works, her son John recounted how right hostility as a“bourgeois” artist. July 5, 1917. She died on October 12, 2012 home but refused to emigrate. Jiri was mine uranium for nuclear weapons. she “said, very bravely, I’m sorry, all Asuccessful exhibition at the aged 95 DaphneSlater Actress whoenjoyed leadingroles at Stratfordinthe postwar yearsand excelledasJaneAustencharactersinearly TV adaptations ITV /REX FEATURES Apetite blonde with blue eyes, Daphne in 1948. The production of Twelfth playing Harriet Smith in Emma (1948), Slater was aShakespearean leading Night transferred to His Majesty’s Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice lady at Stratford on Avon before she Theatre and she continued her trawl of (1952) and Anne Elliot in Persuasion was 20 and became one of the stars of the classics at the Arts Theatre under (1960). She had the title role in Jane early television drama, particularly in Alec Clunes, with plays including The Eyre (1956), with Stanley Baker as adaptations from Jane Austen. She Cherry Orchard and Molière’s Tartuffe. Rochester, and played Prue Sarn with might have achieved even more had At the Arts, too, she was in the pre- the harelip in Precious Bane,Mary she not put family before her career miere of Christopher Fry’s verse drama Webb’s saga of rural life in Shropshire and decided to retire early. The Lady’s Not For Burning.She re- after the Napoleonic Wars. The daughter of acivil servant, turned to Molière in Le Malade Imagi- She continued to appear on television Daphne Helen Slater was born in 1928 naire,translated as The Gay Invalid,at into the 1970s but mostly in supporting and grew up in Bedford Park, West the Garrick Theatre and played Cord- roles or taking guest spots in series such London. She was encouraged to try for elia in King Lear at the Old Vic. as Callan.She played Mary Tudor to the stage by her mother, who had her- In 1952 Harrison was appointed Glenda Jackson’s Elizabeth in the BBC self wanted to be an actress. After at- director of the Nottingham Playhouse drama Elizabeth R (1971). She retired in tending Haberdashers’ Aske’s School, and Slater went with him, happy to 1975, when she was in her late forties, Slater went on astate scholarship to give up her West End career for £12 a and spent her later years in Germany the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, week in regional rep. She said: “I have and in Switzerland, where she died. where she won the gold medal. Slater as alonely spinster in Love Affair, an ITV Playhouse production, in 1974 an old fashioned idea that the husband She and Harrison were divorced in Success came quickly. She was spot- has to be the breadwinner.” She later 1964 and she later married Frederick ted by the actress Anna Neagle, given a tract worth £8,000 but she did not see ing roles including Juliet, described by took time off to bring up their two sons. Kolmar, an Austrian businessman. He screen test by Neagle’s producer hus- her future in films and it was cancelled Kenneth Tynan as “excitable and im- Although she lit up the Nottingham predeceased her and she is survived by band, Herbert Wilcox, and cast in The by mutual consent. petuous” in Peter Brook’s Romeo and stage with excursions into Shake- her sons. Courtneys of Curzon Street (1947), one Despite very little stage experience, Juliet,Olivia in Twelfth Night and Mi- speare, Ibsen and Chekhov, she turned of aseries of light, escapist films star- she had been chosen to join the com- randa in The Tempest.Afellow actor in increasingly to television where she Daphne Slater, actress, was born on ring Neagle and Michael Wilding.