Bettina Jonic

History

Jonic was raised in Los Angeles, California to Croatian parents. She studied ballet for ten years with Theodore Kosloff and Bronislava Nijenska, then studied music and singing at Mozarteum, Vienna Academy of Music, and the Paris Conservatory of Music. She specialized in music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss before becoming known as an interpreter of Bertolt Brecht. Before forming the Actors Work Group, she collaborated with Peter Brook. She also created the Actor/Singer Development at the Royal Opera House in 1980, developing it into The Little Garden.

In 1967 she released an album of 15 songs on D'Art Records titled Brecht with Music, which mixed her interpretations of Bertold Brecht.

In 1975, she released an album of 22 songs on Actor/Singer Development Productions, Ltd. titled The Bitter Mirror, which mixed her interpretations of Brecht and Bob Dylan, which was reissued in 1974 by Records for Peace. The album was finally reissued on compact disc in 2010 by Motema Music.

She is currently at work on With and Without Sam: Volumes One and Two, a collection of her correspondence with Samuel Beckett, an excerpt of which appeared in The London Magazine (Summer 2010), as well as a project combining Beckett's Happy Days with Alban Berg's Wozzeck and another project combining Beckett's Stirrings Still with Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis."

Personal life

Bettina Jonic met John Calder in 1957. They were married in 1961 and divorced in 1975. They have a daughter named Anastasia born in 1963.

Poetry Collections