Kathleen Ferrier - Contralto Corner
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Kathleen Ferrier
Her career started with a private bet with her husband, and ended up with composers such as Benjamin Britten creating roles for her (Lucretia). She also sang Bach and Handel and Mahler, as well as traditional English folk songs. She had been suffering from bone cancer, and during her final performance of Orpheus, her thigh bone splintered. Ferrier finished the performance, and had to be carried out on a stretcher. She died a few months later.
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Kathleen Ferrier was (and still is) one of the world’s great singers.  Her appeal transcends all ages and seemingly all generations, more so  perhaps than any other singer. She died more than fifty years ago, yet  she is still remembered and her voice is still heard and loved by  millions around the world.
Kathleen Mary Ferrier was born on 22 April 1912 at Higher Walton , a village near Preston in  Lancashire in the North of England. She died in London on 8 October  1953. During her short career she went from one triumph to another,  received the adulation of her peers, of critics and of audiences all  over the world and still maintained her natural charm, nobility,  humility, humour and love for truth, people and life.
Kathleen’s  father was the village schoolmaster at Higher Walton. A good singer  himself, he taught most of the music at the school. He later became a  headmaster in Blackburn and the family moved there when Kathleen was two  years old.
Kathleen did not begin her career as a singer. She was a keen member of  the school choir but even then she had a big voice and she was usually  asked just to stand at the back and sing quietly. Her mother, keen to  encourage Kathleen’s musical interest, arranged piano lessons for her  and, as a talented young pianist of only 14 she passed the final grade of the Associated Board of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music . A newspaper of the time called this ‘an unprecedented success for so youthful a student.’
Kathleen  left school at 14 and went to work for the GPO in Blackburn, first in  the telegrams department and then as a switchboard operator.
In July 1930, at the age of 18, Kathleen took part in her first concert as a pianist, which was broadcast from Manchester ,  and began to accompany many local singers in a musical scene which was  very active in Lancashire. She regularly entered and won all the major  music festivals, but had become interesting in singing and began taking  some rudimentary lessons from the singers she accompanied.
By the time Kathleen was 23 she was married and living in Silloth ,  on the Cumbrian coast, where her husband was the local bank manager.  Kathleen gave piano lessons to the local children. When she entered the  prestigious Carlisle Festival in  1937 as a pianist, her husband bet her a shilling that she dare not  enter for the singing contest as well as the piano prize. Never one to  refuse a dare Kathleen accepted the challenge, entered the contralto  solo class and not only carried off both trophies, but won the first  prize for the best singer at the Festival. Carlisle was a turning point,  and this brilliant new singer was in great demand. In 1939 she made her  first radio broadcast as a singer.
Kathleen was approached by CEMA – the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, and the forerunner of the Arts Council of Great Britain .  It was now wartime and CEMA were doing an ENSA style job in bringing  music to people in the factories, villages and hostels throughout  Britain, during the war years. In June 1941 she signed up with CEMA and  her professional career had effectively begun. The CEMA tours were hard  but invaluable and important training for Kathleen. Wartime travel was  extremely difficult and the venues were geographically haphazard, the  North one day, South next, North the day after, and so on. She sang in  church halls, cinemas, schools and factories – in fact anywhere where an  audience could be got together.
In 1942 Kathleen sang for the great English conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent who  told her that she had a great future, but that to further her career  she must live in London. With the help of her sister, Winifred, the  decision was made and they moved into a flat in Hampstead . Kathleen began lessons with the baritone singer Professor Roy Henderson who helped to improve Kathleen’s voice dramatically.
Kathleen’s career began to take off. She made records and became well  known on the concert platform and in all the great oratorio works,  particularly the Messiah and Elgar's masterpiece The Dream of Gerontius. The composer Benjamin Britten wrote his second opera, The Rape of Lucretia, with Kathleen in mind for the title role.
Kathleen  sang for the first time in New York in 1948, to great acclaim, and then  began tours of America, Canada, Holland, Scandinavia and America again.  The problems of travelling abroad were almost as bad as travelling at  home. Stars in those days did not have the entourages they have now, and  Kathleen was mostly on her own, coping with indifferent and sometimes  non-existent hotel arrangements.
During 1951 Kathleen had an operation to remove a malignant breast  tumour. This seemed to be successful and she resumed her career after a  spell in hospital. She toured again, at home and abroad and was one half  of many brilliant collaborations – with Roy Henderson, Benjamin  Britten, Sir John Barbirolli and the great German conductor Bruno Walter , with whom she was instrumental in bringing the work of the composer Gustav Mahler to  a much wider audience. Throughout 1952 she was dogged by problems of  movement and it was found that further treatment was necessary.  Determined as ever, she fulfilled as many of her commitments as she  could between regular hospital visits. Eventually though, she was unable  to meet the travel demands. She and Barbirolli were working on an  English version of Orfeo and it was as much as she could do to  keep up with this. Despite a further operation her condition continued  to deteriorate and she was re-admitted to hospital where she died on 8  October 1953.
Kathleen Ferrier’s life was not a tragic one, even despite its brevity.  She was forty-one years old when she died. In the ten years or so of  fame which were granted her she achieved more than most singers achieve  in a lifetime. In tribute Bruno Walter said that the greatest privileges  in his life were to have known and worked with Kathleen Ferrier and  Gustav Mahler – in that order.
© The Kathleen Ferrier Society