Obituary, April Cantelo (1928-2024)

The English soprano April Cantelo, who created the role of Helena in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has died aged 96.

Born in Hampshire in 1928, Cantelo took piano and viola lessons and sang in her local church choir as a child, but originally intended to pursue a career in medical research; after spending six months studying singing at Dartington Hall (where Imogen Holst was a great supporter), she was persuaded to change direction and enrolled at the National Opera Studio, where her teachers included Czech composer and conductor Vilém Tauský and the dramatic soprano Joan Cross. 

After graduation Cantelo joined the Deller Consort, the New English Singers and the chorus at Glyndebourne, with the latter contract proving a turning-point in terms of her personal and professional life: during her first season there she met her future husband Colin Davis (who was then a clarinettist in the orchestra), and in 1950 she made her solo debut with the company at the Edinburgh Festival, singing Echo in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Cantelo would reprise both roles at Glyndebourne’s home in Sussex, where she also sang Blonde in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Marzelline in Beethoven’s Fidelio.

Another significant debut took place in 1952, when Cantelo sang Rosetta in Thomas Arne’s pasticcio Love In a Village with the English Opera Group at the Aldeburgh Festival; it was here that she came into contact with Benjamin Britten, and in 1956 she appeared as Juliet Brook on the composer’s own recording of his children’s opera The Little Sweep. Four years later she sang Helena in the world premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Aldeburgh (with her friend and regular collaborator Alfred Deller as Oberon); Cantelo would go on to record the role of the sweet-natured schoolteacher Miss Wordsworth on Britten’s studio recording of Albert Herring in 1964, an interpretation which was described as ‘deliciously funny’ by Gramophone. Her marriage to Davis (whom she had supported through her singing work whilst he established himself as a conductor) was dissolved that year after he began a relationship with their children’s au pair.

New music played a significant role in Cantelo’s career: she enjoyed an especially close artistic relationship with the Australian composer Malcolm Williamson (for whom she created roles in English Eccentrics, The Happy Prince, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, Our Man in Havana and Julius Caesar Jones), and also sang in the first performances of Lennox Berkeley’s A Dinner Engagement (as Susan Dunmow) and Ruth (as Orpha). In 1962 she appeared in the challenging central role of Manon Lescaut in the first UK performances of Hans Werner Henze’s Boulevard Solitude, and the following year she sang Jenny in the British premiere of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (both with Sadler’s Wells).

Cantelo’s agile lyric soprano also lent itself well to Baroque repertoire, and here again she often ventured off the beaten track, singing the title-role in the modern premiere of John Eccles’s Semele in 1972 and Xantippe in the first professional British production of Telemann’s Der geduldige Socrates two years later. A regular at the BBC Proms from the late 1950s to the early 70s, her performances there included works by Cavalli, Purcell and Monteverdi, as well as the Proms premiere of Orff’s Carmina Burana; in 1967 she sang at the inauguration of the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, joining Robert Tear, Raymond Leppard and Bernard Richards for a programme of music by the venue’s namesake.

After retiring from the stage, Cantelo made her home in the Oxfordshire village of Sutton Courtenay, where she acted as vocal coach to the All Saints Singers, adjudicated in local music festivals and maintained a private teaching-practice; her students included the soprano Rosemary Joshua. Cantelo died on 16th July, and is survived by two children from her marriage to Davis.

April Cantelo - a selected discography