Iris Kells
Petite soprano who was often cast as children and animals
IRIS KELLS, who has died aged 93, was a soprano who had roles in early performances of works by Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, notably the former’s Pilgrim’s Progress, in which she sang the woodcutter’s boy in the premiere at Covent Garden, and the latter’s Peter Grimes, singing second niece in the first recording with Peter Pears.
One of her favourite parts was Eurydice in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, which was staged by Sadler’s Wells in the 1960s. The role had been created by June Bronhill, but when the soprano pulled out of the company’s tour of Australia in 1962 Kells took her place.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that in this staging “hell is depicted as a sort of beatnik paradise … Eurydice takes a bubble bath and all the girls look like Brigitte Bardot.”
Iris Kells was a great friend of the conductor Rafael Kubelík and his wife the soprano Elsie Morison, whom she had met at college. Whenever Kubelík was working in Europe, Iris Kells would be on hand as friend, helper, seamstress and much-appreciated factotum.
Iris Victoria Kells was born on January 31 1923, in Pachmari, a British hill station in central India, where her father, who was of Irish descent, was a colonel in the Indian Army.
She had two older brothers, one of whom would be lost in the war and the other of whom became a printer. As a child she received little formal music training, although on one occasion she sang a duet with Noël Coward when he was on tour.
The family moved to Britain in 1939 and she entered the Royal College of Music, where she worked with Vaughan Williams.
Later she went on to study with Clive Carey, the baritone and teacher. She joined the chorus at Covent Garden in 1949 and was soon promoted to soloist, singing small roles in Manon, The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro; one critic wrote of her appearance in the latter in 1952 that “particular praise is due to Miss Iris Kells’s lovely singing of Barbarina’s pin-aria in the last act”.
Yet she felt that many of her roles were small – because of her petite stature she was often cast as a child or animal, such as the wood bird in the Ring Cycle – so she began to explore other opportunities and in 1958 was Gretel in Sadler’s Wells staging of Hansel and Gretel.
A combination of circumstances – a benign brain tumour, the birth of her daughter, and early widowhood – meant that after the late 1960s she was little heard of again on the opera stage.
She reinvented herself, however, in the West End, when she understudied Judi Dench in The Good Companions at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1974 and sang for the Ice Capades at Wembley.
After her husband died she took a Cordon Bleu course, which added to her popularity as a hostess. She made a delicious almond cake and her curry evenings – rekindling some of her childhood experiences – were popular with a wide range of friends. However, an allergy to alcohol meant that she never tasted fine wine.
In 1947 Iris Kells married the conductor and music coach Leonard Hancock while she was still a student at the Royal College. That marriage was dissolved and in 1967 she married Stephen Arlen, the general manager of Sadler’s Wells Opera. He died in 1972 and she is survived by their daughter, whose godfather, Laurence Olivier, insisted that if she was to call her daughter Juliette, it had to be spelt the French way. Iris Kells, born January 31 1923, died August 10 2016