Elizabeth Bainbridge

Elizabeth Bainbridge (28 March 1930 – 8 December 2024) was an English and British opera singer. Her career in singing spanned several decades. She achieved most of her successes while a member of the company of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. Bainbridge was a mezzo-soprano and contralto.

Early life Bainbridge was born on 28 March 1930 in Rawtenstall, Lancashire in the North of England. She left school at the age of 14, and worked in the weaving mills of Lancashire during the last year of the Second World War before studying at the Guildhall School of Music in London.

Career Bainbridge made her professional debut as the Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte at Glyndebourne in East Sussex in 1963. The following year saw her debut at the Royal Opera House in Wagner's Die Walküre.

Personal life and death Her son, Godfrey Bainbridge, was born in 1954. She has two grandsons, Christopher Bainbridge and Julian Bainbridge. She married the Jamaican Phillon Castell Morris (b.1946 - d.1988) in the 1970s. Bainbridge died in East Wittering, West Sussex on 8 December 2024, at the age of 94.

Discography Ralph Vaughan Williams: Five Tudor Portraits, conducted by David Willcocks, Angel, 1969 Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas, conducted by Colin Davis, Philips, 1970 Jules Massenet: Cendrillon, conducted by Julius Rudel, Columbia, 1979 William Walton: Troilus and Cressida, conducted by Lawrence Foster, EMI, 1995

Filmography Dido and Aeneas (as Second Witch), 1965 Peter Grimes (as Auntie), 1969 The Yeomen of the Guard (as Dame Carruthers), 1975 Peter Grimes (as Auntie), 1981 The Yeomen of the Guard (as Dame Carruthers), 1982 Il Trovatore (as Azucena), 1983