Portal:Opera/Selected biography/20

Kathleen Mary Ferrier CBE (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English contralto who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the classical works of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar. Her death from cancer, at the height of her fame, was a shock to the musical world and particularly to the general public, which was kept in ignorance of the nature of her illness until after her death. In 1946 Ferrier made her stage debut, in the Glyndebourne Festival premiere of Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia. A year later she made her first appearance as Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, a work with which she became particularly associated. By her own choice, these were her only two operatic roles. Her final public appearance was as Orfeo, at the Royal Opera House in February 1953, eight months before her death. The Kathleen Ferrier Scholarship Fund, administered by the Royal Philharmonic Society, has made annual awards to aspiring young professional singers since 1956.