Norma Procter

Norma Procter was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, in February 1928 and trained at the Royal College of Music with Roy Henderson. She made her début at the 1948 Edinburgh Festival in the Mozart Requiem and emerged through the early 1950s as one of the leading British contraltos of the concert and oratorio repertoire — territory in which Kathleen Ferrier’s death in 1953 had left a significant gap.

Her central work was in the major concert and oratorio repertoire of the British choral festival tradition. Bach’s *St Matthew Passion*, Handel’s *Messiah*, *Israel in Egypt* and *Samson*, Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles, Elgar’s *Dream of Gerontius* and *Sea Pictures*, and the Brahms *Alto Rhapsody*. She worked regularly with Otto Klemperer, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Barbirolli and Carlo Maria Giulini, and made important studio recordings of the Mahler symphonies. Her operatic work was relatively modest — Erda in the *Ring* cycle, the Witch in *Hänsel und Gretel* — but her concert and broadcast presence through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was substantial. She was a regular soloist at the Three Choirs and Edinburgh Festivals.

Procter died in Norfolk in March 2017. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of her concert, Mahler and oratorio work across three decades of British recital and choral performance.