Helen Watts

Helen Watts ( born December 9, 1927 in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales; † 7 October 2009) was a Welsh opera singer and concert singer with the voice Alt.

Life

Helen Watts initially studied piano, but then changed to vocals. The vocal studies she graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London. After completing her training she became a member of the BBC Radio Choir, however, soon made ​​her first professional appearances as a soloist. These had initially Watts in broadcasting. So she sang in 1953 in a broadcast by the BBC cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Also in 1953 she appeared on a radio broadcast of the opera Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph Willibald Gluck in the title role of Orpheus. Under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent in 1955 she gave her debut at the London Proms with concert arias by Johann Sebastian Bach. 1963 Watts sang at the Proms the alto solo in a performance of the Symphony No. 3 in D minor by Gustav Mahler.

1958 Watts gave her debut as a stage singer. In the commercial Opera Society, she sang the Didymus in Handel's oratorio Theodora. 1959 there followed appearances as Ino and Juno in the oratorio Semele. In 1961 she sang the title role in the opera Rinaldo. In 1965, Helen Watts, a member of the Covent Garden Opera in London. Sir Georg Solti committed Watts in the 1960s, also for its complete recording of Richard Wagner's stage tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen for the roles of the knighting in Die Walküre and the first Norn in Götterdämmerung. In Wagner Specialists also included the Erda in Das Rheingold and Siegfried in their brilliant games.

She also frequently appeared as an opera singer performs in opera by Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams. In 1984 she sang at the Opéra National de Lyon as a landowner Larina in Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky one of her last stage roles. 1985 Watts retired from the stage.

Helen Watts was estimated world as a concert singer. She sang a weitgefächtertes concert repertoire, which focus included works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but also works of Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg. Multiple they occurred in the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius by Edward Elgar. As a recitalist she performed, among others, the song cycle woman love and life of Robert Schumann.

In 1978 she was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as a Commander of the British Empire, CBE.

The surviving through numerous radio recordings, live recordings and record musical work of Helen Watts was partially re-released in recent years also on CD.