Audrey Langford

Audrey Langford (28 June 1912, Rochdale — 5 August 1994, Bromley) was an English soprano, conductor, and voice teacher. Musicologist Elizabeth Forbes wrote, "Audrey Langford will no doubt go down in musical history as a superb singing teacher over a period of 50 years, but she also had two other successful careers, as a soprano who sang at Covent Garden in the late 1930s and, after the war, as a conductor, most particularly of the Bromley Philharmonic Choir and the Kentish Opera Group, both of which organizations she founded." a Flower Maiden in Parsifal (1936, 1937, and 1939), and the Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel.

After opera ceased at that theatre with the outbreak of World War II, Langford spent the war years performing as a member of the Entertainments National Service Association. With the latter organization she conducted the United Kingdom premieres of two operas by Gian Carlo Menotti: The Old Maid and the Thief on July 14, 1960, and The Saint of Bleecker Street on July 27, 1962. In 1974 she conducted the Bromley Philharmonic Choir and Handel Chamber Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall for a recording of Jules Massenet's Marie-Magdeleine. She was also David Parry's first conducting teacher.

Langford was also a guest conductor with the Scottish Opera; conducting performances of Handel's Partenope (1964) and Bastien und Bastienne (1966).

Personal life and death Langford's first husband was violist Frederick Riddle. Richard Warner Best Susan Bickley Jeffrey Black Christine Bunning Meribeth (Bunch) Dayme Elisabeth Erikson Helen Gasztowt-Adams Sheri Greenawald Hugh Hetherington Martyn Hill Ann Hood Richard Jackson Janis Kelly Dorothy Maddison Maureen Morelle Arwel Huw Morgan Josephine Nendick Joan Rodgers Ghillian Sullivan Torhild Staahlen Josephine Veasey