Jean Allister

Jean Allister (26 February 1932 – 11 July 2012) was an opera singer who encompassed a wide range of repertoire both on stage and on the concert platform in a career spanning over 30 years.

Life and career

Allister was born in Ballymoney. She studied under Norman Allin at the Royal Academy of Music and her early roles included Mistress Quickly at the Academy in 1954, and parts in Elijah at the Royal Festival Hall, and Handel's Belshazzar at the Foundling Hospital in July 1955. She married her fellow student the tenor Edgar Fleet in 1955 and they worked together in several performances including Britten's Spring Symphony at the Royal Academy and Abraham and Isaac at the Royal Court Theatre. and at the Three Choirs Festivals she appeared from 1961 to 1977, where she participated in the British premiere of Martin's In Terra Pax in 1960 and the same composer's Requiem in 1975.

In May 1961, Allister took one of the sixteen lines in Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music at Charles Groves' farewell concert with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and later sang Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand under him at the Proms in 1964. In 1966, Allister was described as “admirable” as the rag-picker in Il tabarro for Welsh National Opera. In Handel's Scipio in Hanover in 1970, Jean Allister sang Lucejo with Charles Farncombe conducting.

She sang Queen Arete in Berkeley's Castaway at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 1967, and as the nanny in the premiere of Gardner's The Visitors there in 1972, Musical Times pronounced her “outstanding”. Her final stage appearance was as Grandmother Buryjovka in the English National Opera North production of Jenůfa in Leeds in 1980. Following this, she taught privately and at the Leeds City College of Music, and lived in the city with her second husband, René Atkinson.

During the 1960s she recorded a significant number of roles in Sullivan operettas, such as The Mikado (Katisha) for EMI; and The Pirates of Penzance (Edith), Ruddigore (Mad Margaret), Utopia Ltd (excerpt - Lady Sophy) and The Sorcerer (Mrs. Partlet) for Decca.