Felicity Lott obit

Dame Felicity Lott has died

 

She was not on the list.

The English soprano lost her battle with cancer, aged 79

The soprano Dame Felicity Lott, who has died at the age of 79, was one of the UK’s best-loved artists, as cherished on the world stage as much as at home. She is closely associated with the music of Mozart and Richard Strauss, but was also a peerless interpreter of the French repertoire whether in mélodies or in operetta, where her sparkling personality won her many admirers on the other side of the Channel.

Born in Cheltenham, Lott studied music from an early age. She read for a degree in French and Latin at Royal Holloway before moving the Royal Academy of Music. Her operatic debut came in 1974 (in Handel’s Tolomeo), and in the years that followed she sang Pamina (The Magic Flute, ENO, 1975), appeared in Hans Werner Henze’s We Come To The River (Covent Garden, 1976), and at Glyndebourne for many seasons in roles that she made her own, including the Countess in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio, Anne Trulove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Elle in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine, Pamina, Helena in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Christine in Intermezzo, Arabella, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and Lady Billows in Britten’s Albert Herring.

She was a passionate recitalist and was a founding member of The Songmakers' Almanac which ensured some glorious collaborations with Graham Johnson, and also alongside the mezzo Ann Murray with whom she often performed, and recorded. Not only did she appear on numerous occasions at Wigmore Hall, but she supported the venue in many ways, particularly in her involvement in the Wigmore French Song Exchange, and received the Wigmore Hall Medal in 2010.

Flott – as she was universally known – was a superb interpreter of Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, a work she recorded (unusually, in the original order) as well as many of the orchestral songs, for Chandos with Neeme Järvi conducting (‘Felicity Lott's fresh and lustrous singing of Morgen! is one more manifestation of the miracle of this song, which seems to draw something individual from all its finest performers. That ability to convey true Straussian rapture which is the hallmark of Lott's singing is particularly evident in Freundliche Vision, and she is delightful in the lullaby Meinem Kinde and in the blithe Das Bächlein,’ wrote Michael Kennedy in December 1987). It was Strauss’s music, notably Der Rosenkavalier (by which time she had graduated from Octavian to the Marschallin), that brought her into contact with Carlos Kleiber – happily, a DVD captures their 1994 Vienna performances alongside Anne Sofie von Otter, Barbara Bonney and Kurt Moll. As Richard Fairman pointed out in an Awards tribute in 2023, 'Once she had stepped up to the Marschallin, she took the role worldwide, to London (at the Royal Opera House in 1987), Brussels, Madrid, Munich, Paris and San Francisco, and gave very special performances at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and in Vienna, both under the baton of Carlos Kleiber ("the most wonderful experience"). The latter … is a classic, not least for the Marschallin’s radiant opening of the trio.'

Another conductor she enjoyed a fruitful working relationship with was Sir Charles Mackerras with whom she recorded Handel’s Messiah (in Mozart’s version), Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni.

She recorded extensively for EMI (now Warner Classics), Telarc, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi and Hyperion. Her recording of Haydn’s Nelson Mass, with Trevor Pinnock (Archiv) won a Gramophone Award in 1986, and she returned to the Awards in 2023 to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, an occasion on which she charmed the audience with her charm and humour.