The Times - UK (2022-05-26)

the times | Thursday May 26 2022 53

Register

Concept artist behind

the Star Wars films

Colin Cantwell

Page 54

Glyndebourne, alongside Elisabeth

Soderstrom, Margaret Price and Kiri Te

Kanawa in the soprano role of her sister

Fiordiligi.iri, etc)

In the end, she sang Cosi so often that

she had mixed feelings. “It’s wonderful

music, but there comes a time when

you just think you’d love to sing some-

thing else because the beauty begins to

be lost on you from sheer boredom,” she

complained.

She was delighted when for a change

the Royal Opera cast her as the sisters’

cunning servant, Despina, a perform-

ance that The Sunday Times hailed as

“the most hilarious, rudest, naughtiest

ladies’ maid” ever seen at Covent Gar-

den. Other Mozartian roles included

Zerlina in Don Giovanni and the page

boy Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro.

Her down-to-earth attitude was

much admired. The critic Norman Le-

brecht, whose praise is hard-earned,

called her “one of the most agreeable

and unfussy personalities on the world

stage”. Once at an opera gala in Brus-

sels, the wife of the Belgian prime min-

ister admired her evening dress and

asked if it was Balenciaga. “No,” she

replied. “Pauline from Cockfosters.”

Among her biggest fans was Clive

James, who knew her for 40 years and

was smitten by more than her voice. Re-

viewing her performance in Der Rosen-

kavalier, he wrote: “The role of Octavi-

an was majestically incarnated by the

stunning British mezzo Anne Howells,

“It would not be too rash to predict a
useful career,” a buttoned-up opera
critic wrote of Anne Howells’s debut at
Glyndebourne in her first leading role.
She had spent three seasons in the
chorus at the opera house when in 1967,
as the summer season was about to
commence, one of the principals in
Cavalli’s L’Ormindo dropped out.
The production was an important
one for the house, the first performance
of the opera in more than three centu-
ries. It was an even bigger occasion for
Howells, who with only two weeks to go
until first night stepped in to play the
part of Erisbe, the Queen of Morocco.
She went on to sing the role more
than 30 times over the next two years,
launching a career that was far more
than “useful” and led to her being ac-
claimed as one of the most naturalistic
actors on the operatic stage.
“I suppose I’m more theatrical than
most opera singers. I’m not a singer’s
singer. I’m an actor’s singer,” she said.
The Sunday Times opera critic Hugh
Canning put it even more forcefully. “If
she were an actress she would be pack-
ing out the West End,” he wrote in 1995.
She almost got the chance when
Cameron Mackintosh invited her to
replace Patricia Routledge in the West
End production of Rodgers and Ham-
merstein’s Carousel. Her agent laughed
at the idea and she had to refuse
because she was contracted elsewhere,
but she regretted the missed opportuni-
ty. “I would have loved to do it,” she said
and added that her ambition was to play
Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
Sadly that opportunity never came,

either. Instead she cut an elegant dash
through the operas of Mozart, Rossini
and Offenbach as well as singing more
contemporary fare. She starred in the
world premieres of Mark-Anthony
Turnage’s The Silver Tassie, Sir Richard
Rodney Bennett’s Victory and Sir
Harrison Birtwistle’s Gawain.
All that held her back was the limited
mainstream repertoire for her vocal
range as a mezzo-soprano. “I can un-
derstand why a lot of mezzos have a go
at soprano roles because we don’t have
all that much, really,” she said.
However, she made the most of every
opportunity that came her way. One
morning her agent phoned to ask if she
was free to take the part of Octavian in
a dress rehearsal for Strauss’s Der Ro-
senkavalier at Covent Garden because
the mezzo singing the role was sick.
“You don’t have to go on stage, just read
it from the score in the wings,” she was
told.
“Like hell I will!” she told her husband
as she put down the phone. She took the
stage at the rehearsal and made such an
impression on the conductor, Sir Georg
Solti, that he asked her to sing the role
in his forthcoming recording of the op-
era.
Alongside Octavian, which became
her favourite role, she was closely asso-
ciated with Dorabella in Mozart’s Cosi
fan tutte, which she sang at the Metro-
politan Opera, Covent Garden and

Advised that no singer

revealed their age, she

knocked off five years

Howells with Luigi Alva in a 1969 production of The Barber of Seville at Covent Garden; right, in Strauss’s Capriccio at the

Royal Opera House, 1990; below, with the tenor George Shirley in 1973 during their run in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande

Howells’s mar-

riages to the ten-

or Ryland Davies

between 1966 and

1981 and the oper-

atic bass Stafford

Dean between

1981 and 1988 end-

ed in divorce. Her

third husband Pe-

ter Fyson died in

2005. She is sur-
      vived by two child-
      ren from her
      second marriage:
      Matthew, an NHS
      executive; and
      Laura, who works
      in public relations.
      Anne Elizabeth Howells was born in
      1941 in Southport, Lancashire, the
      daughter of Mona (née Hewart) and
      Trevor Howells. Much of her early
      childhood was spent in South Africa,
      where her father took a job as an
      engineer.
      The family returned to Britain when
      she was ten and settled in Sale, Chesh-
      ire. She failed her 11-plus and went to
      the local secondary modern until she
      transferred at 15 to Sale Grammar to sit
      her O-levels.
      At 13 she bought a violin from a school
      friend but within weeks her father had
      made her give it back because he
      couldn’t stand the noise. She took up
      singing lessons instead. She enrolled at
      the Royal Manchester College of Music
      after the principal, Frederic Cox, had in-
      spired her with a talk at a school careers
      convention. Her sister Susan Griffiths
      also studied at the college.
      She was taught by Vera Rozsa, whose
      other students included Te Kanawa
      and Anne Sofie von Otter and who was
      due to coach the planned comeback of
      Maria Callas at the time of the singer’s
      death in 1977.
      Rozsa told her that no singer revealed
      their age, so she knocked five years off
      which subsequently got her into troub-
      le with Equity. “I got two cards and was
      two different people. That’s the kind of
      thing that sends people scurrying to see
      which is accurate. But I will not say
      which,” she said.
      She eventually owned up to her real
      age and made herself a promise that she
      would leave the stage gracefully once
      the years started to tell on her voice. “I
      don’t want to drift into the sunset play-
      ing the woman who comes on and sings
      ‘Milady, the Count is without’ and then
      buggers off again,” she said. “I’ll give up
      before that ever happens.”
      True to her word, in 2000 she be-
      came a professor at the Royal Academy
      of Music, where she spent many years
      tutoring the next generation of singers
      in an inimitable style all her own.
      Rozanna Madylus, one of her pupils,
      recalled learning a song by Bizet, and
      Howells telling her: “This must be sung
      with the sensuality of having dipped
      two fingers in warm scented oil and
      slowly traced along the back of your
      lover.” At that point the accompanying
      pianist almost fell off his stool, uttering
      the words: “I’d heard about your lessons
      but I didn’t realise they’d be this good.”

Anne Howells, opera singer, was born

on January 12, 1941. She died of bone

marrow cancer on May 18, 2022, aged 81

Obituaries

Anne Howells

Mischievous Lancastrian mezzo-soprano and star of Glyndebourne and Covent Garden who told of an affair with a smitten Clive James

MIRRORPIX/GETTY IMAGES; MURRAY SANDERS/ANL/SHUTTERSTOCK; EVENING STANDARD/HULTON /GETTY IMAGES

r o b 1 a D 1 e

th

te

2 v r s M e L

in

AnneElizabethHo

singing and acting with the finely con-

trolled clarity of emotion that the role

demands but doesn’t always get.”

When a Covent Garden production

of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia was tele-

vised on BBC2, James’s review virtually

ignored Joan Sutherland in the title role

and enthused instead about her co-star.

“Anne Howells was given

clothes worthy of her cap-

tivating looks. Usually

there is a very Brit-

ish conspiracy to

weigh down this

telegenic mezzo

with a load of

unlovely

schmutter,

thus to offset

the advantages

conferred on

her by nature.

This time she was

allowed to strut dy-

namically about in

highly becoming velvet

pants-suits plus Renais-

sance accessories.”

She paid him back in somewhat

unkind fashion in 2009 with a kiss-and-

tell account of an alleged affair, pub-

lished in The Oldie under the headline

“Clyde and the Diva”. In it she described

how they had met when “Clyde” was a

student at Cambridge and she was

singing with the “Oxbridge Operatic

Society”. Some years later he invited

her for dinner, where after a couple of

bottles of wine he peered over the table

and said: “Be my mistress.”

“Is there a vacancy?” she asked.

When he replied that there was, she

told him, “All right. I’ll give it a go.”

The rest of the article was wickedly

indiscreet. Sex was “accompanied by a

sort of running commentary by

Clyde as if a camera were

mounted on a track

running the length of

the bedroom”. At

one point he told

her: “I’ve been

eating short-

bread so you

can start by

sucking the

crumbs from

between my

teeth.”

When he ended

the affair he told her

that he could “Berlioz

no more”. Roles in both

Benvenuto Cellini and Les

Troyens by the French composer

were a core part of her repertoire.

The story made headlines and initial-

ly James made a half-hearted denial

and claimed that he lived strictly by the

code “look but don’t touch”. Friends

knew better and in 2012 his wife of 44

years threw him out of the family home

in Cambridge when further evidence

emerged of his affairs.

s was given

of her cap-

Usually

Brit-

to

is

o

.

as

dy-

ut in

g velvet

us Renais-

es.”

m back in somewhat

sort of running co

Clyde as if a

mounted

runnin

the b

one

her

ea

br

ca

su

cr

bbbe

tttteet

W

tttthe aff

ttthththat he

nnnno more”.

BBBBeBenvenuto Ce

TTrTrTrTroyens by the Fren

were a core part of her re