Sylvia Fisher

Sylvia Fisher was born in Melbourne in April 1910 and studied at the Melba Conservatorium with Adolf Spivakovsky and Mary Campbell. She moved to England in 1947 after winning the Australian Sun Aria Contest, and made her Covent Garden début that same year as Leonore in *Fidelio* under Karl Rankl — the beginning of a fifteen-year association with the company as its leading dramatic soprano.

She was the principal Wagner and Strauss soprano of post-war Covent Garden under the Rankl, Kubelik and Solti music directorships. Her central roles were the Marschallin in *Der Rosenkavalier*, Leonore, the Wagner heroines (Senta, Sieglinde, Elisabeth, Eva) and Strauss’s Ariadne and Empress in *Die Frau ohne Schatten*. She was a regular guest at Sadler’s Wells, the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival. From the 1960s onwards she moved into the mezzo-soprano repertoire and into Britten’s contemporary works — she sang Elizabeth I in the world premiere of Britten’s *Gloriana* and Lady Billows in *Albert Herring*, and was a regular member of the English Opera Group.

Fisher returned to Australia in the late 1970s and died in Melbourne in August 1996. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of her Wagner, Strauss and Britten work at Covent Garden and elsewhere.