Heather Harper: Renowned British soprano who excelled both in the concert hall and on the operatic stage

Revered the world over, Heather Harper, who has died aged 88, was an English soprano of outstanding ability and admirable range. Equally at home in the concert hall or on the operatic stage, her voice was expressive, supple and totally engaging.

Her rise to international fame came in dramatic fashion in May 1962 when, given just 10 days’ notice, she stepped into the breach to replace the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya at the world première of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, taking place in a recently completed and newly consecrated Coventry Cathedral.

A native of Northern Ireland, born in Belfast, Heather Mary Harper was educated locally at Ashleigh House School. From there, her prodigious musical gifts brought her to London to study for four years at Trinity College of Music. Initially a piano scholar, also playing the violin and viola, she won a vocal scholarship 12 months later. A further period of study with Helen Isepp helped refine her vocal technique.

Soon a member of the BBC Chorus, she quickly learnt her trade, working under the auspices of choirmaster John McCarthy and his ever-expanding range of Ambrosian vocal ensembles.

In 1954 she was recommended to Jack Westrup for his Oxford University Opera Club production of Verdi’s Macbeth. The following year she starred as Euridice in Haydn’s Orfeo and Euridice at St Pancras Town Hall. An early breakthrough came when she played Violetta in an ambitious BBC Television production of La Traviata. Later that same year she appeared with The New Opera Company in the first English production of Schoenberg’s Erwartung at Sadler’s Wells.

Adding further lustre to her reputation were roles in two Arthur Benjamin operas, A Tale of Two Cities and Manana. Having understudied Sena Jurinac in The Force of Destiny and sung in the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus at the 1955 Edinburgh Festival, she made her debut at the Sussex opera house in The Magic Flute two years later, returning again in 1968. Able to combine a powerful vocal range with a commanding stage presence and a rare dramatic flair, she made her Bayreuth debut in Lohengrin in 1967. In the company of Amy Shuard and Gwyneth Jones, she returned the following year.

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Her debut at The Met in New York came in 1977, playing the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. Here, she made her Covent Garden debut as Helena in the 1962 production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Amid numerous other appearances, in 1967, when German baritone Hans Hotter was unable to perform in Siegfried, Götterdämmerung was substituted. All the cast were available, except Harper, who was appearing that night at the Royal Festival Hall. In the event, Sylvia Fisher agreed to fill in at Covent Garden for the second act, while Harper, shuttling back and forth, fitted in acts one and three around her other concert featuring Brahms’ German Requiem.

While regularly attracted to more newly minted creations, she remained a particularly articulate interpreter of the music of Benjamin Britten and a regular visitor to the Aldeburgh Festival. As well as her definitive role in the War Requiem and her later recording, she also created several roles in Britten’s operas, most notably Mrs Coyle in the television opera Owen Wingrave and the Governess in The Turn of the Screw. In 1967, she was one of the soloists at the opening of The Maltings, Snape, and for many followers of Britten’s operas, she alone remains the finest contemporary Ellen Orford.

Likewise, a stalwart of the English choral tradition, she was much in demand both in London and the provinces. Amid more than 20 years’ close association with The Bach Choir, her talents took in everything from Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, not forgetting the annual performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Once a regular visitor to the Cheltenham Festival and the Three Choirs, there she took the lead in Julius Harrison’s Requiem, In Terra Pax by Frank Martin and two works by Anthony Milner, The City of Desolation and The Wind and the Fire.

It was when touring Australia in 1982, in the midst of what became a non-stop global career, that she first performed Malcolm Williamson’s Hammerskjöld Portrait for Soprano and String Orchestra. Successfully lobbying the BBC for a further work from Williamson, it was her second husband, Argentinian Eduardo Benarroch, who suggested a setting of poems from his countryman, Jorge Luis Borges. The result was Next Year in Jerusalem, a powerful symphonic song cycle, first heard at the 1985 Proms and, while undoubtedly challenging for its soloist, was well received.

Her extensive discography, totalling almost 100 recordings, brought her countless Grammy awards and, in 1979, Ravel’s Schéhérazade won the Grand Prix du Disque. Alongside Mahler and Tippett, no less impressive are the more intimate offerings of Beethoven and Schubert in the company of Paul Hamburger, or Michael Berkeley’s sadly neglected nuclear oratorio, Or Shall We Die? a moving setting of words by Ian McEwan. As this recording so aptly demonstrates, Harper’s sensitivity to nuance and colour allowed her to take great delight in the occasional grand gesture.

Appointed a CBE in 1965, she retired from the operatic stage in 1984 and the concert platform seven years later. She did make the occasional return, most notably for her 61st appearance at the Proms in 1994. While a name with Merrett Holdings, the second largest underwriting agency at Lloyds, her talents were much in demand for masterclasses, workshops and workshops worldwide. Teaching at the Royal College of Music and The Britten-Pears School, in 1987, she was appointed the first visiting lecturer in residence at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

She is survived by her second husband.

Heather Harper CBE, singer, born 8 May 1930, died 22 April 2019