Joan Cross

Joan Annie Cross (7 September 1900 – 12 December 1993) was an English soprano, closely associated with the operas of Benjamin Britten, who wrote five roles with her in mind. She also sang in the Italian and German operatic repertoires, and later became a musical administrator, taking on the direction of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company and acting as principal of the Opera Studio in London (later called the London Opera Centre). Her repertoire was unusually wide, ranging from lyric to dramatic soprano roles, from Mozart to Wagner. Most of her singing career was with Sadler's Wells Opera, the forerunner of the English National Opera but she appeared at the Royal Opera House from time to time.

Life and career Joan Cross was born in London on 7 September 1900 and was adopted by an aunt and uncle. She was educated from 1913 at St Paul's Girls' School, where Gustav Holst was among her music teachers, and, from 1923, Trinity College of Music, where, after studying the violin with Émile Sauret, she was taught singing by Dawson Freer. While still a student she sang as a soloist in recitals and oratorio.

In 1923 Cross joined the chorus of the Old Vic opera company at its theatre in south London. Cross gained promotion to secondary principal roles within a year. Gradually Cross rose to the central operatic roles: the title role in Aida was followed by Elsa in Lohengrin (1928), learned in ten days as a last-minute replacement. Cross had a short-lived marriage (date uncertain) to a James Armstrong, but she seldom referred to it; they had no children.

At Sadler's Wells, Cross's career flourished. She took on roles such as Leonora in La forza del destino, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly; according to the critic Frank Granville Barker, "she was equally persuasive as Mimi in at one end of the scale and Sieglinde in at the other". In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Bryan Crimp describes Cross as "a consummate singing-actress in an exceptionally wide range of roles, from Purcell's Dido to Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus)". According to Granville Barker, Cross reached a peak in her career in 1939 as the Marschallin in , "a role in which she made regrettably few appearances owing to the outbreak of war". Lilian Baylis had died in 1937 and the three Old Vic and Sadler's Wells companies were under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie. With no London base the opera company, with greatly reduced forces, toured the country. Guthrie appointed Cross to lead the company. Her contract stipulated that her new role was to be purely administrative, but in practice it was often necessary for her to sing in emergencies or to take small parts for which the small troupe had no available performers.

The company presented London seasons at the New Theatre and for the next four years it appeared in theatres all over the country (in sixty-nine different towns) often in places where opera had never been professionally staged before. By 1943 the company had grown sufficiently to undertake a successful revival of The Bartered Bride, followed by Così fan tutte with Cross as Fiordiligi, Owen Brannigan as Don Alfonso and Peter Pears as Ferrando. In a biographical sketch, Lord Harewood writes that Cross's management was skilled enough to ensure that the company emerged from the war years financially sound – "something of a triumph for a manager singing roles in Dido and Aeneas and The Beggar's Opera, as well as giving regular performances of Butterfly, Violetta, the Countess and Mimi". Yet when Peter Grimes opened, it was hailed by public and critics; its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for La bohème and Madame Butterfly, which were being staged concurrently by the company.

Post-war The internal acrimony within the company led to the departure of Cross, Pears, Reginald Goodall (who conducted the new opera) and Eric Crozier (who directed it). Cross was not invited to sing the Marschallin in her production, but was onstage at Covent Garden in 1953 singing Elizabeth I in Britten's Gloriana. Harewood comments that Cross met all the demands of the role from Elizabeth's imperious appearance in public to her vulnerable private self and her humility praying to God for guidance. Her final new role in a Britten opera was Mrs Grose in The Turn of the Screw at in Venice in 1954. She retired from singing the following year. Both Cross and Wood resigned in 1964 after a dispute with the board. Harewood speculates that this may explain why Cross did not receive the damehood that much of the operatic world believed she deserved.

Recordings Cross was not a prolific recording artist, but a few commercial studio sets were made and several non-studio recordings have been issued on LP and CD: A complete Albert Herring recorded live in Copenhagen in 1949, with the composer conducting. A complete The Turn of the Screw, conducted by Britten, recorded by Decca in 1955. An abridged set of Iolanthe as Celia. An abridged set of The Gondoliers, as Gianetta. An abridged set of The Mikado as Pitti-Sing. An abridged The Rape of Lucretia. from The Magic Flute. from The Marriage of Figaro. The Ave Maria and Willow Song from Otello. They call me Mimi from La bohème.