Joan Cross
Encyclopedia
Joan Cross was an English soprano
, closely associated with the operas of Benjamin Britten
. She also sang in the Italian and German operatic repertoires. She later became a musical administrator, taking on the direction of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company
.
, and studied singing at the Trinity College of Music
. In 1923, she joined the chorus of the Vic-Wells opera company at the Old Vic
, later taking on a wide range of solo soprano roles for the Sadler's Wells
company and a few at the Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden
. Her Covent Garden performances included Mimi in La Bohème
and Desdemona (to Lauritz Melchior
's Otello
) in 1934.
During this period she also became a noted Marschallin
, Sieglinde and Brünnhilde
, Elisabeth
, Elsa
, Madame Butterfly, Aida
, Donna Anna
and Tatiana
.
Cross undertook the direction of Sadler's Wells Opera Company in the Second World War. Sadler's Wells had been forced to convert to a touring company because its theatre was requisitioned by the government for war-related purposes. The theatre reopened on 7 June 1945 with the première of Britten's Peter Grimes
, in which work Cross created the leading female role of Ellen Orford.
The other Britten roles that she created were:
In the series of Decca
recordings of his operas Britten conducted, Cross appeared only in the 1955 mono recording of The Turn of the Screw, the other operas being recorded after her retirement from singing—namely Peter Grimes in 1958, Albert Herring in 1964 and The Rape of Lucretia in 1970. (Gloriana was not commercially recorded until 1992, when Cross was aged 92.) However, archival recordings of her performances as Ellen Orford and the Female Chorus became available in the 1990s.
Because of rifts within the Sadler's Wells Company, Cross left to become a founding member of the English Opera Group
in 1946/7. She sang comparatively little in the post-war years and retired from singing in 1955.
Cross began directing opera in 1946, beginning with Der Rosenkavalier
at Covent Garden and, in 1950, she staged La traviata
for Sadler's Wells. In addition to directing in London she also worked abroad, primarily in the Netherlands and with the Norwegian National Opera.
She founded the Opera School (later the National School of Opera, then London Opera Centre
) with Anne Wood in 1948.
Joan Cross died in Aldeburgh
on 12 December 1993. She is buried in Saint Peter and Saint Paul's churchyard, Aldeburgh
, where her associates Britten, Peter Pears
and Imogen Holst
are also interred.
As well as her Britten recordings, Cross made 78-rpm discs of a number of operatic arias and other pieces of music during the 1930s and '40s. They attest not only to the beauty of her good-sized lyric voice but also to the high quality of her technique and the intelligence of her interpretations.
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
, closely associated with the operas of Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
. She also sang in the Italian and German operatic repertoires. She later became a musical administrator, taking on the direction of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
.
Career
Cross was born in London. She attended St Paul's Girls' School, where her music teacher was the composer Gustav HolstGustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
, and studied singing at the Trinity College of Music
Trinity College of Music
Trinity College of Music is one of the London music conservatories, based in Greenwich. It is part of Trinity Laban.The conservatoire is inheritor of elegant riverside buildings of the former Greenwich Hospital, designed in part by Sir Christopher Wren...
. In 1923, she joined the chorus of the Vic-Wells opera company at the Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
, later taking on a wide range of solo soprano roles for the Sadler's Wells
Sadler's Wells Theatre
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue located in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington. The present day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500 seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive...
company and a few at the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
. Her Covent Garden performances included Mimi in La Bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
and Desdemona (to Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior was a Danish and later American opera singer. He was the pre-eminent Wagnerian tenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and has since come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type.-Biography:...
's Otello
Otello
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
) in 1934.
During this period she also became a noted Marschallin
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
, Sieglinde and Brünnhilde
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
, Elisabeth
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
, Elsa
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
, Madame Butterfly, Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
, Donna Anna
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
and Tatiana
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
.
Cross undertook the direction of Sadler's Wells Opera Company in the Second World War. Sadler's Wells had been forced to convert to a touring company because its theatre was requisitioned by the government for war-related purposes. The theatre reopened on 7 June 1945 with the première of Britten's Peter Grimes
Peter Grimes
Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the Peter Grimes section of George Crabbe's poem The Borough...
, in which work Cross created the leading female role of Ellen Orford.
The other Britten roles that she created were:
- Female Chorus in The Rape of LucretiaThe Rape of Lucretia (opera)The Rape of Lucretia is an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, written for Kathleen Ferrier, who performed the title role. Ronald Duncan based his English libretto on André Obey's play Le Viol de Lucrèce.-Performance history:...
(GlyndebourneGlyndebourne Festival OperaGlyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
1946); - Lady Billows in Albert HerringAlbert HerringAlbert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten.Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera The Rape of Lucretia...
(Glyndebourne 1947); - Elizabeth I in GlorianaGlorianaGloriana is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer, based on Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey...
(Covent Garden 1953); and - Mrs Grose in The Turn of the ScrewThe Turn of the Screw (opera)The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella...
(La FeniceLa FeniceTeatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
, Venice 1954).
In the series of Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
recordings of his operas Britten conducted, Cross appeared only in the 1955 mono recording of The Turn of the Screw, the other operas being recorded after her retirement from singing—namely Peter Grimes in 1958, Albert Herring in 1964 and The Rape of Lucretia in 1970. (Gloriana was not commercially recorded until 1992, when Cross was aged 92.) However, archival recordings of her performances as Ellen Orford and the Female Chorus became available in the 1990s.
Because of rifts within the Sadler's Wells Company, Cross left to become a founding member of the English Opera Group
English Opera Group
The English Opera Group was a small company of British musicians formed in 1947 by the composer Benjamin Britten for the purpose of presenting his and other, primarily British, composers' operatic works. The group later expanded in order to present larger-scale works, and was renamed the English...
in 1946/7. She sang comparatively little in the post-war years and retired from singing in 1955.
Cross began directing opera in 1946, beginning with Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
at Covent Garden and, in 1950, she staged La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
for Sadler's Wells. In addition to directing in London she also worked abroad, primarily in the Netherlands and with the Norwegian National Opera.
She founded the Opera School (later the National School of Opera, then London Opera Centre
London Opera Centre
The London Opera Centre, a school for the training of opera singers and other opera professionals, existed in England between 1963 and 1977. It was located in the former Troxy Cinema on Commercial Road in London's East End Borough of Stepney . The Troxy, with 3,520 seats, opened in 1933 and was...
) with Anne Wood in 1948.
Joan Cross died in Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh is a coastal town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Located on the River Alde, the town is notable for its Blue Flag shingle beach and fisherman huts where freshly caught fish are sold daily, and the Aldeburgh Yacht Club...
on 12 December 1993. She is buried in Saint Peter and Saint Paul's churchyard, Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh is a coastal town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Located on the River Alde, the town is notable for its Blue Flag shingle beach and fisherman huts where freshly caught fish are sold daily, and the Aldeburgh Yacht Club...
, where her associates Britten, Peter Pears
Peter Pears
Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten....
and Imogen Holst
Imogen Holst
Imogen Clare Holst, CBE was a British composer and conductor, and sole child of composer Gustav Holst.Imogen Holst was brought up in west London and educated at St Paul's Girls' School, where her father was director of music...
are also interred.
As well as her Britten recordings, Cross made 78-rpm discs of a number of operatic arias and other pieces of music during the 1930s and '40s. They attest not only to the beauty of her good-sized lyric voice but also to the high quality of her technique and the intelligence of her interpretations.
Literature
- D. Brook, Singers of Today (Revised Edition - Rockliff, London 1958), 55-60.