Adele Leigh

Adele Leigh (15 June 1928 – 23 May 2004) was an English operatic soprano, later the wife of the Austrian ambassador in London.

Early life Leigh was born in Hackney, East London on 15 June 1928. Her father left when she was two and she was brought up in Highbury by her mother, Betty, and her Polish-Jewish immigrant grandparents. At the start of World War II, the family moved to Reading, where they all shared one rented room in a large house. A few years later, the family returned to London, and she went to Crouch End High School for Girls.

Leigh trained at RADA and later at the Juilliard School, New York, and in 1948 joined the opera company at Covent Garden.

Career In 1948, Leigh was recruited by the Royal Opera at Covent Garden and was, at 19 years old, the youngest principal among such future stars as Geraint Evans and Sylvia Fisher. The previous day, impresario C. B. Cochran had signed her in the leading role of Bless the Bride, a new musical by Vivian Ellis and A. P. Herbert. After much negotiating, Cochran released Leigh from the contract. The same year she performed at the Royal Variety Performance.

Leigh made her American debut as Musetta in Boston in 1959, and the following year sang in New York with City Opera, as Sophie in Werther and Octavian; she also learnt Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow in English (and made her first entrance wearing white satin rather than traditional black). When she joined Zurich Opera in 1961, the Intendant, Herbert Graf, agreed to her singing Glawari, among other roles, but insisted she made her entrance in black. As her ambition was to sing the role in Vienna, her success in Zurich led to engagement as she was principal soprano at the Vienna Volks Oper from 1963 to 1972, singing glamourous operetta roles which were her forte.

She retired in 1981

From 1992 she taught stagecraft and presentation at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. and 1988.

Personal life After her Covent Garden career, she married American bass-baritone James Pease, a widower 15 years her senior, who soon died from a heart attack while they were both singing at the Zürich Opera.

She died on 23 May 2004.

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