Margaret Price

Dame Margaret Price was born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, in April 1941 and studied at the Trinity College of Music in London with Charles Kennedy Scott. She made her début with the Welsh National Opera in 1962 as Cherubino, and her Covent Garden début came the following year — also as Cherubino, replacing Teresa Berganza at short notice in a production conducted by Sir Georg Solti.

Her career across the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s placed her among the leading Mozart and lyric-dramatic sopranos of her generation. Her central roles were Mozart’s Donna Anna, the Countess, Fiordiligi, Donna Elvira and Pamina; Verdi’s Desdemona, Amelia in *Un ballo in maschera*, and the title role in *Aida*; Strauss’s Marschallin and Ariadne; and the title role in Bellini’s *Norma*. She sang regularly at Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Cologne Opera (where she was a resident company member from 1971 to 1980), the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the Salzburg Festival and the Metropolitan Opera (from 1985). She was particularly admired in the long-lined Mozart and Strauss repertoire that suited her warm, even, distinctively flexible voice.

Price was created Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993. She retired from staged opera in 1999 and died at her home in Cardiganshire in January 2011. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of her Mozart, Verdi and Strauss work.