Anne Collins

Anne Collins (29 August 1943 – 15 July 2009) was an English contralto known as versatile operatic singer, praised for her "beautifully warm and wide-ranging timbre, and impeccable diction". In a career that spanned nearly 40 years, she sang a wide range of operatic character roles and other classical pieces, including standard opera repertory, premieres, 20th century pieces, art song and other music.

Collins began her career at Sadler's Wells Opera, from 1970 to 1976. She debuted at Covent Garden in 1975 as Grimgerde in Wagner's Die Walküre. Collins sang with most of the major British opera companies and at opera houses throughout Europe. She used her early musical training when playing the cello onstage as Lady Jane in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience in several English National Opera productions. She made 20 recordings of serious opera roles and other classical music, and her performances of several Gilbert and Sullivan roles are preserved on video.

Career Collins was born in Meadowfield, near Durham, the daughter of "a musical family". From 1961 to 1963 she trained at Bretton Hall College, Yorkshire, intending to become a music teacher. She then studied at the Royal College of Music, London, first the cello and then vocal studies; her teachers included Meriel St Clair and Oda Slobodskaya. She began her association with Gilbert and Sullivan's operas at ENO, starting with her "formidable" Fairy Queen in Iolanthe (1971). There, she also sang her four roles for the first time in Wagner's Ring cycle (1973).

Collins was a particularly versatile operatic singer, including in her repertoire roles in early opera (such as Arnalta in The Coronation of Poppea), German works (Adelaide in Arabella as well as her Wagner roles), Russian opera (Clarissa in The Love for Three Oranges and Filipyevna in Eugene Onegin), French works (Antonia's Mother in The Tales of Hoffmann and Ragonde in Count Ory), Italian operas (Mamma Lucia in Cavalleria rusticana, Suzuki in Madame Butterfly, Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera and Mistress Quickly in Falstaff), and played English roles from Katisha in The Mikado to Mrs Sedley and Auntie in Peter Grimes. She notably played the cello onstage while singing Lady Jane in Patience for ENO, a role she also sang in New York and Vienna. In The Times, Alan Blyth called it "a connoisseur's performance".

Collins made her Covent Garden debut in 1975 as Grimgerde in Die Walküre and later appeared there as Anna in Berlioz's The Trojans (1977), as the Mother in Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (1983), Mary in Wagner's The Flying Dutchman (1986), the Mother Superior in Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel (1992) and Auntie in Peter Grimes (2004), the last of which she sang in several productions in Europe. At Opera North she sang the nurse in Ariane et Barbe-bleue. She sang at the Last Night of the Proms in 1976 and 1980, as well as taking part in concert performances of Patience, The Midsummer Marriage and The Gypsy Baron at the Proms. She also played in the first two of these roles both within and outside Britain. She appeared in Ezio and Hercules for the Handel Opera Society. In Ezio she "managed to steal each scene her (comparatively minor) character was in, simply by singing her lines with faultless diction so that the audience realised how unintentionally funny they were." Her Glyndebourne debut was as Florence Pike in Albert Herring in 1986. She later played Blanche in Ken Russell's production of Princess Ida for ENO at the Coliseum Theatre in 1992.

Grove comments that Collins was a "versatile singer with a strong, even voice … equally at home in Wagner and in Gilbert and Sullivan"; Albert Herring Mrs Herring 2003 Peter Grimes Mrs Sedley 1996 Mrs Peachum 1993 Margot la Rouge Licensee and Third Woman 1981 Coronation Ode 1977 Glagolitic Mass 1974 Arnalta 1971 Third Lady 1990 Suor Angelica Abbess 1973 Mother Goose 1996 Dame Carruthers 1993 Vakula the Smith Solokha 1990 Empress Persicaria 2003 sacred music 1976–90 madrigals 1969–75 Erda 1975 Rossweisse 1975 Siegfried Erda 1973 First Norn 1977