Caroline Hatchard

Caroline Gertrude Hatchard (12 October 1883 – 7 January 1970) was a British lyric soprano, musical theatre and opera singer of the 20th-century who was the first English-born and trained soprano to be engaged by the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden where she played Sophie in the British premiere of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier on 29 January 1913 with Thomas Beecham conducting. where fellow students included Arnold Bax, Hubert Bath, Eric Coates and York Bowen. While at the RCM she lodged with a family in Streatham where she met civil servant Robert Squire Langford (1880-1946), whom she married at Streatham on 23 August 1908. They had two sons: Peter H G Langford (1915–2010) and Ewen Langford (1923–2011).

Singing career Hatchard had an important stage and concert platform career from the Edwardian era up to the 1920s, regularly playing leading roles with the Covent Garden Opera Company, the Denhof Opera Company and the Beecham Opera Company. She made her début at the Queen's Hall in a Prom concert in 1904 at which she sang Sullivan's 'Orpheus with his Lute' In the same season she sang Flora Bervoix in La Traviata and Siebel in Faust. She reprised various of those roles for the Denhof Opera Company From 1910 under the baton of Thomas Beecham she sang Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann (1910) and Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus (1910). In March 1911 she sang in Sullivan's The Martyr of Antioch with the Huddersfield Choral Society conducted by Sir Henry Coward. and her singing was regularly broadcast in the then new medium of radio from 1924. In 1925 she appeared in Dame Ethel Smyth's Mass in D at the Royal Albert Hall, with Herbert Heyner and Astra Desmond, with Malcolm Sargent conducting and sang Polly in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in March 1928 with the Halifax Choral Society. In February 1929 she was the soloist in The Early Spring Sun by Dr. Harold Lake performed with the Plymouth Madrigal Society.

In the early 1930s she left the stage to become a teacher of voice at the Royal Academy of Music where one of her students was Helen Watts, remaining there until her retirement in 1952.

Recordings From 1909 to 1911 and 1921 to 1923 Hatchard recorded 27 discs with 21 being released. These included songs by Löhr, Clarke, Lehmann and Sullivan, two songs from The Arcadians ('Pipes of Pan' and 'Light is My Heart'), the aria 'With Verdure Clad' from Haydn's The Creation, 'For Tonight' (The Waltz Song) from Tom Jones by Edward German and three Gilbert and Sullivan arias ('Poor Wand'ring One', 'The Sun Whose Rays, and 'Love is a Plaintive Song') as well as arias by Offenbach ('You've Pledged Your Word' and 'The Doll Song' from The Tales of Hoffmann), Delibes, Verdi, Meyerbeer and Donizetti.

Caroline Hatchard died in London in 1970 aged 87.