Kathleen Ferrier

Kathleen Ferrier (1912–1953) started singing professionally late; she was thirty when she did her first performance as a soloist (in Händel’s ‘Messiah’). She only performed in two operas, Britten’s ‘The Rape of Lucretia’ (1946) and Gluck’s ‘Orfeo ed Eudridice’ (1947). Her rising star as a highly characteristic alto was cut short when she died at only 41; from breast cancer. Luckily, she managed to do many recordings in her too brief career, among the most treasured are Mahler’s ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ and ‘Kindertotenlieder’.