Ann Howard
Ann Howard (born Ann Pauline Swadling, 22 July 1934 – 26 March 2014) was an English mezzo-soprano and actress who had an international performance career in operas, musicals, and concerts that spanned five decades. She began performing on the stage as an amateur in the late 1940s, and made her professional debut in London's West End in the 1956 musical Wild Grows the Heather. She spent the next four years performing as principal boy in British pantomime before joining the chorus of the Royal Opera House (ROH) in 1959. After studying opera on a scholarship in France, she returned to the ROH as principal singer in small to mid-sized roles from 1963 to 1965.
Howard's first large role in an opera was as Azucena in Il trovatore at the Welsh National Opera (WNO) in 1964. That same year she joined the Sadler's Wells Opera (later re-named the English National Opera) with whom she performed regularly into the 1990s in a wide range of parts from leading ladies to character roles; among them Delilah in Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah, the Witch in Engelbert Humperdinc's Hansel and Gretel, Fricka in Wagner's Ring Cycle, Lilli Vanessi / Katharine in Cole Porter's musical Kiss Me, Kate, the Composer in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, and Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville to name just a few. In 1970 she had a major success at Sadler's Wells in the title role of Bizet's Carmen, and she subsequently sang this role repeatedly at theaters around the world over the next 14 years.
In her later career, Howard performed in many contemporary operas. She also sang in several world premieres, and starred as Cinderella's Step Mother in the 1990 West End production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods. Her final performance was as Auntie in Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes at the WNO in 1999; a role she had sung earlier at the English National Opera in 1991 and at the Metropolitan Opera in 1995. Music critic Noël Goodwin wrote that Howard's "vivid stage personality, strong in comedy or in sinister character, is combined with clear articulation and a full and flexible voice over a wide compass."
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