April Cantelo, who has died aged 96, was a gifted and versatile English soprano with a clear, brilliant voice who rose from the Glyndebourne choir to create the role of Helena in Benjamin Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 1960; she went on to find a special place in the hearts of several generations of the country’s young singers, coaching them in technique, guiding their repertoire and encouraging their ambitions with her helpful but honest advice.
Tall and imposing, April Cantelo has won praise for her interpretations of both old and new music. She sang Xantippe in the first professional British production of Telemann’s Der geduldige Socrates for Kent Opera under Roger Norrington in 1974, and Manon Lescaut in the British premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Boulevard Solitude with the New Opera Company in 1962. She also sang Jenny brilliantly in the British premiere of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny (1963), and appeared in the 1964 world premiere of Malcolm Williamson’s Edith Sitwell adaptation English Eccentrics.
She established something of a speciality in Williamson’s operas, appearing as Beatrice Weston in Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana (1963); as Berthe in the richly romantic The Violins of Saint-Jacques (1966), based on the book by Patrick Leigh-Fermor; and as Swallow in a recording of the children’s opera The Happy Prince (1965), based on the story by Oscar Wilde. While many criticised Williamson’s “pop opera” approach, they were impressed by his way of writing with particular singers in mind. “The harmonic quality in his melodies brings out the best in people’s voices,” she told The Daily Telegraph in 1975.
Like many singers, April Cantelo found the coughing of the audience to be a distraction, and said that the fear of doing so made people cough more. Her advice to those who suffered from the condition was to leave the hall quietly, but if that was not possible, she suggested a simple trick: “Breathe in quietly through your nose and then out for a count of 10: this will take away that tense feeling.”
April Rosemary Cantelo was born on 2 April 1928 in Purbrook, Hampshire, the daughter of Herbert Cantelo, an amateur cellist, and his wife Marie (née Abraham). Educated at Chelmsford Girls’ School, she sang Bach arias with the Chelmsford Festival Orchestra in 1947 and took piano lessons at the Royal College of Music in London.
His first dream was to be a “medical-type research scientist,” he told the Oakland Tribune in 1971. He played piano and sang in his church choir, but when someone suggested he audition for a song, he thought “it was too funny.”
The audition was for Dartington Hall, a small arts college in Devon. “I spent six months with them and got a lot of training, plus the opportunity to go back into scientific research if I didn’t like singing,” she said. Needless to say, she never went back – although, “sometimes I look back and wonder… It’s a strange life, an extension of ‘let’s do it’ and a long, hard climb.”
April Cantelo’s vocal talents soon became apparent and she joined the National Opera Studio, studying with Vilem Tausky. Other teachers included Joan Cross and Imogen Holst, who remembered her as an excellent viola player. On one occasion, during an orchestra rehearsal, there was so much extraneous noise behind her head that “she kept playing, turning around to see what was going on,” Imogen Holst wrote.
In 1948, April Cantelo appeared with the New English Singers, the Deller Consort and the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus. That summer, the Glyndebourne orchestra included clarinetist and future conductor Colin Davis. They married the following year, but he was her breadwinner during what she called her early years in the “amateur wilderness”.
“My career started before his because I was a young singer and there are more opportunities for a young singer than a young chef,” she told the Daily Mail. “So he had to do the babysitting, which was probably frustrating.”
Davis didn’t always help himself. Friends recalled that he once accompanied her to a rehearsal and she sat there fumbling with her shoe. His struggles paid off, at least for him, when in 1957 he was offered the position of assistant conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
April Cantelo made her solo debut with the Glyndebourne company at the 1950 Edinburgh Festival as Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos, singing Strauss’s little arietta at the beginning of the work with great charm, and appeared as Barbarina in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. The following year, she appeared on the Sussex stage again as Barbarina. In 1953, she sang Echo again there and sang Blonde in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
By then she had made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, taking a small part in The Magic Flute, conducted by John Pritchard. She had also made her debut at the Aldeburgh Festival, playing a charming Rosetta in a performance of Thomas Arne’s 18th-century parody Love in a Village for Arthur Oldham’s English Opera Group.
Her first Proms appearance was in the Proms premiere of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, conducted by Basil Cameron, in 1958. She returned to the Royal Albert Hall nine more times until 1973, singing in works including Vaughan Williams’s Pastoral Symphony, Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été and Williamson’s concert arrangement of Our Man in Havana. In 1967 she took part in the inaugural concert of the Purcell Room at the South Bank Centre, performing for the Apollo Society with Raymond Leppard and Robert Tear in a programme appropriately entitled “Homage to Henry Purcell”.
In the 1970s April Cantelo’s career took her to Australia, appearing frequently in Williamson’s operas. She was also a visiting lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where she directed a staging of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen in 1972.
April Cantelo quietly retired from the stage and in 1979 founded the Highnam Court Project with conductor Roger Smith. Their plan was to convert the 17th-century mansion in Gloucestershire, once owned by the family of composer Hubert Parry, into a foundation for the arts. Opera weekends were held there and in 1981 the restoration work was featured in an ATV documentary.
Settling in Oxfordshire, he transformed the amateur peasants of the All Saints Singers in Sutton Courtenay, near Abingdon, into a professional vocal choir, and even persuaded some of his professional colleagues to join the Singers as soloists in Haydn masses, Bach passions and Telemann oratorios.
Three years earlier, she had been portrait by Ruth Swain, wearing a pink wool hat and heavy beige coat, a cane in each of her gloved hands. The artist suggested calling her Soprano; April Cantelo replied: “That would be better, call it Lady with Two Canes.”
April Cantelo’s marriage to Davis ended in 1964 after she began an affair with her children’s Iranian nanny, Ashraf Naini (known as Shamsi), whom she later married. He died in 2013. They had a daughter and a son.
April Cantelo was born on April 2, 1928 and died on July 16, 2024.
