Acclaimed soprano and regular star of the Edinburgh Festival

Born: May 8, 1930;

Died: April 22, 2019

HEATHER Harper, who has died aged 88, was a popular soprano who, after her debut with the Royal Opera in 1962, went on to enjoy a hugely successful international career.

A singer who invested all her operatic roles with a fine musical authority and intensity, Harper made 13 appearances at the Edinburgh Festival. Many were in prestigious concerts and recitals but in 1973 (and ‘74) she was in a hand-picked cast for a special festival production of Don Giovanni and in 1975 an equally celebrated production of The Marriage of Figaro. The conductor throughout was Daniel Barenboim making his first appearance as a conductor in an opera house and the only time he has ever conducted in an opera house in the UK.

Peter Ustinov directed Giovanni with Harper singing a redoubtable Donna Elvira and Geraint Evans and directed the Figaro with Harper delivering a majestic countess.

She also came with the English Opera Group to the 1963 festival in Britten’s (who also conducted) The Beggar’s Opera - in the cast were Peter Pears and Janet Baker. Harper made her festival debut with the Scottish National Orchestra (SNO) under Adrian Boult in 1959 singing Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony.

Other notable visits included the SNO’s thrilling performance in 1966 of Mahler’s 8th Symphony (The Symphony of a Thousand - nine soloists and fondly remembered as the debut of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus) and two memorable concerts in 1970: the first under Colin Davis of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and two nights later Beethoven’s Mass in D under Carlo Maria Giulini when Harper and Placido Domingo electrified the Usher Hall.

Harper was a regular soloist during SNO seasons – making her debut in 1966 in Britten’s War Requiem conducted by Gibson and then a wonderful account of Mahler’s 4th Symphony in 1985. She gave superb performances of both the St John and St Matthew Passions, Tippett’s Symphony No3, the Verdi Requiem, Brahms’ Requiem and Delius’ Mass of Life.

Heather Mary Harper was born in Belfast the daughter of a lawyer and won a scholarship to study piano and voice at Trinity College of Music, London with voice as a second subject. She joined the BBC Chorus before becoming a principal (1956-75) with the English Opera Group.

In 1962 she gained worldwide fame when she was rushed in to take over the soprano role in the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral. With ten days’ notice Harper learnt the hugely difficult role after the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya had her visa withdrawn by the Soviet authorities. Years later Harper admitted in a BBC interview that, “For those ten days I didn’t look at another score – or the other singers’ parts. At the end Britten, Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau embraced me and it was only then I realised I had been part of a remarkable world premiere.”

That year she made her debut at Covent Garden (Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and over the next 30 years was a regular at the theatre. Notable appearances included the premiere of Tippett’s The Ice Break, Mrs Coyle in Britten’s Owen Wingrave and as the Empress in Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten. In a performance of that work at the 1976 Covent Garden Proms, The Financial Times wrote, “Georg Solti and the singers were given a thunderous ovation.”

Harper had an extensive international career – she was the first English soprano to sing at Bayreuth (Elsa in Lohengrin, 1967) and also made distinguished appearances at all the leading opera houses and with the world’s major orchestras.

The role for which she will be rightly remembered was that of the troubled Ellen Orford in Britten’s Peter Grimes. Harper was the acknowledged interpreter of Ellen and in Elijah Moshinsky’s bare and stark production at Covent Garden, Harper gave a stunning account of the complex embroidery aria. Jon Vickers’s harrowing account of the title role and Harper were acclaimed when the Royal Opera visited La Scala and the Los Angeles Olympic Festival.

Harper was involved in such epic recordings as The Messiah (under Colin Davis), The War Requiem (under Richard Hickox), Mahler’s 8th Symphony (under Solti) and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (under Guilini)

Harper, who was made a CBE in 1965, was appointed a director of singing at the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh and, in 1987, the first visiting lecturer-in-residence at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music.

Colleagues remember her as, “a delight and a fine musician who had perfect pitch and could digest a new score with a musical relish.” She enjoyed gardening and cooking and, significantly, chose as her luxury item on Desert Island Discs wool and knitting needles.

Heather Harper’s first marriage, to Leonard Buck, was dissolved. In 1973 she married the Argentinian music critic Eduardo Benarroch, who survives her.

ALASDAIR STEVEN