Dame Janet Abbott Baker (born 21 August 1933) is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.[1]
Baker is particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which lasted from the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus, Les Troyens. As a concert performer, Baker was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar. David Gutman, writing in Gramophone, described her performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder as "intimate, almost self-communing".[2]
Biography and career
Early life
Janet Abbott Baker was born in Hatfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where her father was an engineer as well as a chorister.[3][4] Members of her family worked at Bentley Pit, in Doncaster.[5] She attended York College for Girls and then Wintringham Girls' Grammar School in Grimsby.[6] The death, when she was 10 years old, of her elder brother Peter, from a heart condition, was a formative moment that made her take responsibility for the rest of her life; she revealed this in a BBC Radio 3 Lebrecht Interview in September 2011.[7]
In her early years Baker worked in a bank, transferring to London in 1953 where she trained with Meriel St Clair and Helene Isepp, whose son Martin became her regular accompanist.[8][9] Knocked down by a bus in 1956, she suffered concussion and a persistently painful back injury.[8] In the same year she came second in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Competition at the Wigmore Hall, winning national attention.[8]
Debut
In 1956, she made her stage debut with Oxford University's Opera Club as Miss Róza in Smetana's The Secret. That year, she also made her debut at Glyndebourne. In 1959, she sang Eduige in the Handel Opera Society's Rodelinda; other Handel roles included Ariodante (1964), of which she later made a notable recording with Raymond Leppard, and Orlando (1966), which she sang at the Barber Institute, Birmingham.[10]
During this same period she made an equally strong impact on audiences in the concert hall, both in oratorio roles and solo recitals. Among her most notable achievements are her recordings of the Angel in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, made with Sir John Barbirolli in December 1964 and Sir Simon Rattle over twenty years later; her 1965 performances of Elgar's Sea Pictures and Mahler's Rückert Lieder, also recorded with Barbirolli; and, also from 1965, the first commercial recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Christmas oratorio Hodie under Sir David Willcocks with The Bach Choir. In 1963, she sang the contralto part in the first performance at the BBC Promenade Concerts of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony under the direction of Leopold Stokowski, then making his Proms debut appearances. She performed in 1971 for the Peabody Mason Concert series in Boston.[13]
In 1976 she premiered the solo cantata Phaedra, written for her by Britten; and Dominick Argento's Pulitzer Prize-winning song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, also written with her voice in mind. She has also been highly praised for her insightful performances of Brahms's Alto Rhapsody and Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, as well as solo songs from the French, German and English repertoire.
Retirement
Dame Janet's final operatic appearance was as Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, on 17 July 1982, at Glyndebourne.[14] In May 1988, she repeated the role in a concert performance with the Oratorio Society of New York (an unannounced farewell to the U.S.). She had continued to perform lieder recitals, retiring for good in 1989 (although she did make a small handful of recordings in January 1990). She published a memoir, Full Circle, in 1982. In 1991, Baker was elected Chancellor of the University of York.[5] She held the position until 2004, when she was succeeded by Greg Dyke.[5] An enthusiastic Patron of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, she gave an address at the closing ceremony of the 2009 event.[15]
She was voted into Gramophone magazine's inaugural Hall of Fame in 2012.[24]
Private life
She married James Keith Shelley in 1957 in Harrow; he became her manager and accompanied her to engagements. They decided not to have children for the sake of her career.[25] Following her retirement as a singer, she did perform and record some spoken roles, for example the role of the narrator in Britten's incidental music for The Rescue of Penelope; in later years, apart from occasional public appearances such as the 2009 Leeds event, she said she had "nothing to do with anyone except close friends".[14] Those friends include the singer Felicity Lott, pianist Imogen Cooper, conductor Jane Glover and actress Patricia Routledge, all of whom appeared in a BBC documentary profile, Janet Baker in her own words, shown in 2019.[26] After her husband suffered a stroke, she cared for him at home.[27] He died in June 2019.[citation needed]
Berlioz: L'Enfance du Christ, Op.25 – John Alldis Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis. Recorded Watford Town Hall, 24–28 October 1976. LP Philips 6700 106, CD 415 949 2.[28]
Berlioz: La Mort de Cléopâtre (with Herminie and 5 songs), London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis cond. (Philips, rec. 03/1979)
Brahms: Alto Rhapsody, op 53, with the male voices of the John Alldis Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult. Recorded Abbey Road Studios, London, 15 December 1970. Producer: Christopher Bishop; Balance engineer: Christopher Parker. CDM 7 69424 2.
Britten: Spring Symphony, op 44, with Sheila Armstrong, Robert Tear, London Symphony Orchestra, André Previn. Recorded Kingsway Hall, 28–29 June 1978. LP ASD3650, CD CDC7 47667 2[28]
Elgar: Sea Pictures, Op. 37, London Symphony Orchestra, John Barbirolli. Recorded 30 August 1965, Abbey Road Studio 1. LP – ASD655, CD CDC7 47329 2[28]
Handel: Julius Caesar with the English National Opera; Charles Mackerras conducting (Chandos CHAN 3019; recorded 1–7 August 1984; released 1999). A studio-made video of the ENO production, recorded at Limehouse Studio, was released on video and later DVD.[29]
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