AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Modern Era
• Singer

1912–53 English contralto Ferrier sang in concerts during World War II and made her opera debut in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne in 1946. The two performances she sang at Covent Garden in 1953 were her last appearances in public before her death from cancer. She was a famous Angel in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and recorded ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

Britten understood the potential of his voice better and sooner than he did himself. Apart from Pears, Britten wrote with deep insight for such singers as the contralto Kathleen Ferrier (1912–53), the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (1926–2012) and the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925–2012). This talent was one of the reasons for his quality as an opera composer, enabling him to ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Modern Era
• Singer

, the Deller Consort, he made many recordings of early music, and he recorded English lute-songs with Desmond Dupré. Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Kathleen Ferrier | Modern Era | Classical ...

• The Voice
• Classical
• Classical Era

or alto. Berlioz did this in his conflation of the two versions of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and it was in the role of Orpheus that the contralto Kathleen Ferrier (1912–53) made her name. But however skilful the costume and make-up, one is always conscious of watching a woman dressed as a man. With the advent on stage in ...