Janet Baker

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Janet Abbott Baker (born 21 August 1933) is an English mezzo-soprano, concert, and lieder singer best known for baroque and early Italian opera as well as Benjamin Britten's works.

During her career, which spanned the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered a versatile singer and keenly admired for her dramatic presence, perhaps best represented in her iconic portrayal as Dido, Berlioz's tragic heroine, Les Troyens.

Dame Janet was renowned for her interpretations of Gustav Mahler's and Edward Elgar's music as a concert performer.

"Intimate, almost self-communicating" is David Gutman's writing in Gramophone, describing Mahler's Kindertotenlieder's success as "intimate, almost self-communing."

Private life

In 1957 in Harrow, she married James Keith Shelley; he became her boss and led her to engagements. They decided not to have children for the sake of her work. In later years, she did perform and record some spoken roles, including the role of the narrator in Britten's incidental music for The Rescue of Penelope; apart from occasional public appearances such as the 2009 Leeds festival, she said she had "nothing to do with anyone but close friends." Those people include singer Felicity Lott, pianist Imogen Cooper, conductor Jane Glover, and actress Patricia Routledge, all of whom appeared in a BBC documentary profile of Janet Baker in her own words, which was on display in 2019. She worried about her husband after he suffered a stroke. He died in June 2019.

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Biography and career

Janet Abbott Baker was born in Hatfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, where her father was both an engineer and a chorister. Members of her family spent time at Bentley Pit in Doncaster. She attended York College for Girls and then Wintringham Girls' Grammar School in Grimsby. In a BBC Radio 3 Lebrecht Interview in September 2011, Peter's elder brother's death while she was ten years old from a heart disease was a turning point that required her to live for the remainder of her life.

Baker spent her youth in a bank before moving to London in 1953, where she worked with Meriel St Clair and Helene Isepp, whose son Martin became her regular accompanist. She was pinned down by a bus in 1956 and sustained concussion and a persistent back injury. She came in second place in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Competition at the Wigmore Hall in the same year, attracting national attention.

Miss Róza was the first female actress to appear in Oxford University's Opera Club in 1956, as Miss Róza in Smetana's The Secret. She made her Glyndebourne debut in the same year. In 1959, she sang Eduige in the Handel Opera Society's Rodelinda; other Handel appearances included Ariodante (1964), in which she later made an outstanding recording with Raymond Leppard, and Orlando (1966), which she performed at the Barber Institute in Birmingham.

Baker performed Dido and Aeneas in 1962, Polly (in Benjamin Britten's interpretation of The Beggar's Opera) and Lucretia in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia) in Aldeburgh's The Fire of Lucretia. She appeared in Dido (1966) and in Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, and Penelope in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria as Dido (1966). Dorabella in Mozart's Cos fan tutte, Dido in Berlioz's The Trojans, as well as Dido in Richard Strauss's Dido and Aeneas, Octavian's The Composer in Ariadne on Naxos and the role of Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, she performed Orfeo in Orfeo's The former was considered her signature role in several films, and a videotaped performance from Glyndebourne is also available (see below).

Janet Baker made her debut as Hermia in Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream in 1966, definging Mozart's Vitellia and Idamante Cressida in William Walton's Troilus and Cressida and the title role in Gluck's Alceste (1981). Charlotte in Massenet's Werther (1971), Charlotte in Massenet's Werther), and Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and Handel's Giulio Cesare performed the title role in the English National Opera.

She had a similar effect on audiences in the concert hall during her tenure as both in oratorio performances and solo recitals. Among her most notable contributions are her recordings of the Angel in Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, produced with Sir John Barbirolli in December 1964 and Sir Simon Rattle's Rückert Lieder; and, later, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Christmas oratorio Hodie under Sir David Willcocks. She appeared in the first performance at Mahler's Resurrection Symphony under Leopold Stokowski's direction, before he performed for the first time in Proms. She appeared in 1971 for the Peabody Mason Concert series in Boston.

She premiered the solo cantata Phaedra, written for her by Britten; and Dominick Argento's Pulitzer Prize-winning song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, she wrote with her voice in mind. She has also been praised for her insightful interpretations of Brahms' Alto Rhapsody, Wagner's Wesendon Lieder, as well as solo songs from the French, German, and English repertoire.

On Saturday, Janet's last operatic appearance was as Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, a popular Italian family. She reprised her role in a concert appearance with the Oratorio Society of New York in May 1988 (an unannounced farewell to the United States). She had to perform lieder recitals for good in 1989, when she did have a small number of recordings in January 1990). In 1982, she wrote Full Circle, a memoir. Baker was elected Chancellor of the University of York in 1991. She served as the head of the department until 2004, when Greg Dyke took over. She gave an address at the 2009 closing ceremony of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition as a devoted supporter of the event.

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