Norma Procter
Cleethorpes-born contralto who stepped into Kathleen Ferrier’s shoes in The Rape of Lucretia
NORMA PROCTER, who has died aged 89, was a contralto with a rich, creamy voice in the style of Clara Butt and Kathleen Ferrier, under whose shadow she sometimes fell; she was heard most often in great choral works such as the Bach Passions and Elgar’s oratorios, but could turn her hand to opera, including the title role of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Aldeburgh in 1958.
In 1974 she sang Rule, Britannia! at the Last Night of the Proms, the last of 27 appearances there stretching back over two decades. That concert took place weeks before the second general election of the year and Charles Groves, the conductor, used his speech to emphasise the importance of music and the arts in a civilised society.
Describing Norma Procter, the critic Edward Greenfield wrote that “looking more than ever like Britannia herself with golden hair flowing, with eyes wide and with brow unfurrowed, she sang with a power and beauty that had us realising afresh that … the Proms remain the greatest annual music festival in the world.”
For many years Norma Procter’s warm and vibrant voice made her a stalwart of the Three Choirs Festival. She first appeared there in 1954 in Elgar’s The Apostles and over the years was heard in works such as Lennox Berkeley’s Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila and Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. She also made something of a speciality in Mahler’s alto roles, being heard on the first complete recording of Das Klagende Lied with Heather Harper and the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink in 1974;
magazine described her as being “splendidly in command throughout the recording”.
Mary Norma Procter was born at Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, on February 15 1928, the daughter of John and Edith, owners of the Lord Nelson Hotel at nearby Brigg. The family also owned a fish curing business, a trawler, a farm – and a racehorse.
It was the horse, Sheila’s Cottage, which brought Norma her first taste of success when it won the Grand National in March 1948, the first mare to do so since 1902, coming in at 50-1 and costing the bookmakers a fortune but leading to much celebration in Cleethorpes, where John used his £9,500 winnings to buy a Rolls-royce, and a round of drinks for the customers of every pub in the town. Norma, a shy 20-year-old, disliked the attention that the win generated.
She was a pupil at Wintringham Secondary School, which Janet Baker, with whom she would later sing, would also attend. Before long she was pursuing her vocal studies in London with the baritone Roy Henderson, who had been Kathleen Ferrier’s teacher, and taking classes in musicianship with Alec Redshaw, who was also from Cleethorpes. Later she had lessons in lieder with Hans Oppenheim and Paul Hamburger.
Her debut came in a performance of Handel’s Messiah at Southwark Cathedral in 1948 and soon she was signed up by Ibbs & Tillett, the leading concert agent of the day, yet even 10 years later she was only being paid 40 guineas a concert. Nevertheless, she was kept busy with appearances around the country in works such as Granville Bantock’s Omar Khayyam at Birmingham, Vaughan Williams’s Five
at the Festival Hall and a good crop of
In 1953, with Kathleen Ferrier ill, Norma Procter stepped in to sing the alto part on Decca’s recording of Messiah with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Adrian Boult. Ferrier had also sung the title role in the premiere of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne in 1946, but after her death the composer turned to Norma Procter to revive the work at Aldeburgh in 1958. Other than some chorus work, she had not previously appeared in an operatic role, but Opera magazine declared her performance to be a “personal triumph”, adding that she played the part “with extraordinary accomplishment and assurance”.
Earlier she had recorded Britten’s canticle Abraham and Isaac, but after delays with the rest of the disc the composer had turned his attention elsewhere. As she recalled: “Unbeknown to me, Ben became interested in a young Irish chorister – John Hahessy … he then broke the news to me that they had already recorded Abraham and Isaac with young John, but our/my recording would still be released later. This was … a great disappointment for me – I so loved the work.” Her recording was not heard until 2001, when it was released on a disc called Britten: The Rarities.
Norma Procter’s Covent Garden debut was in 1961, when she sang the title role in Gluck’s Orpheus with Elsie Morison as Euridice. Five years later she returned to Covent Garden, this time as one of the singers in the Royal Ballet’s production of Kenneth Macmillan’s Song of the Earth with a cast that included Rudolf Nureyev, Antoinette Sibley and Lynn Seymour.
Quiet and reserved, Norma Procter was sympathetic to pacifist causes. In 1960, having apparently forgiven Britten, she took part in a late-night performance with Peter Pears of Abraham and Isaac at the Festival Hall in support of Christian Action’s Defence and Aid Fund for South Africa. And in 1984, by which time she was rarely heard in public, Norma Procter sang in a Concert for Peace for Armistice Day at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Although her career took her to concert halls around the world, including Germany, France and South America, Norma Proctor never lost her shy and retiring nature. She remained at Cleethorpes, where she welcomed students to her home and enjoyed listening to classical music on the radio, surrounded by the elegant gowns she had worn on stage.
She was unmarried.
Norma Procter, born February 15 1928, died May 2 2017