June Preston

Singing career Preston studied music at Seattle University where she appeared in the university's 1947 production of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore and was the soprano soloist in the university's performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem in 1949. In 1950, she began a singing tour through Mexico, performing in Guadalajara at the Degollado Theater in July.

In the summer of 1952 she toured with a company led by Argentine opera impresario Gregorio Ravic, which included Nicola Moscona, Jean Madeira, and Graciela Rivera, for four weeks of performances in cities in Colombia. (Ravic's company was known as the "Compañía de Ópera Estrellas del Metropolitan" (Stars of the Metropolitan) as several of the ensemble's leads were principal artists of the Metropolitan Opera (the "Met") who performed with this touring group while on summer break from the Met.) However, it was not affiliated with the Met and also employed singers from other American opera companies. A 1952 Variety article reported that Preston was married to Ravic at this time. She was a member of the chorus of the San Francisco Opera for the 1952–1953 season and 1953–1954 season. Beginning a tour through the Caribbean in early 1954, she conducted a series of performances in February of that year starting in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Later in the month, she traveled to Roatán, Honduras and performed with pianist Manuel Rueda from the Dominican Republic.

On November 4 and 5, 1961, at the Kiel Opera House in St. Louis, she was a soloist in the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in concert with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. She subsequently began a tour of recitals in Europe. In October 1962, she sang at Op Gouden Wieken, a concert hall in The Hague. She gave a recital on November 30, 1962, in Barcelona at the Palau de la Música Catalana and a subsequent performance in Tarragona on December 3, 1962.

Personal life and death Preston married Belgian concert violinist Saul Höuben in 1963.

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