Joan Carlyle
Versatile and popular soprano who trod the boards at the Royal Opera House for almost 20 years
JOAN CARLYLE, who has died aged 90, was a principal soprano at the Royal Opera House for almost 20 years. She appeared with Maria Callas and Jon Vickers in Cherubini’s Medea in 1959; was a delightful Tytania in the 1961 London premiere of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by John Gielgud and conducted by Georg Solti; and sang Mimi opposite Luciano Pavarotti’s Rodolfo when the tenor made his house debut in Puccini’s La bohème in 1963.
Working with Maria Callas was quite the experience for the young singer. “I learnt so much from her, not least how to perform with one’s back to the audience,” she told Opera magazine.
During La bohème, which she first sang in 1960, Joan Carlyle took a dislike to the ham salad provided for Marcello’s “Passatemi il ragù” aria in Act II. Instead, she cooked her own ragout, serving it on stage during the performance. The dish proved so popular that she had to prepare ever-larger quantities to allow the stage crew a bite. “When Pavarotti saw and smelt it, he was so captivated he nearly missed two entries,” she recalled.
Joan Carlyle worked with many of the world’s leading conductors, including Herbert von Karajan on a celebrated 1965 recording of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The session itself was somewhat unusual, taking place at 2.15am to suit his unconventional schedule. She recalled that while Karajan was formidable, he was also sympathetic, advising her never to begin on a loud note but “rather allow a soft note to become louder”: “He was right, of course – for the audience it’s much more exciting to hear a note expanded.”
There was no love lost between Karajan and Solti, who tried, unsuccessfully, to stop her attending the sessions with his rival. Solti had earlier been a great support in 1964 when she sang Zdenka in Covent Garden’s first staging of Strauss’s Arabella with Lisa Della Casa in the title role. Both artists helped her to graduate to the main part a couple of years later, the first British singer to do so, when she appeared opposite Dietrich Fischer-dieskau.
The elderly Otto Klemperer embarrassed her in rehearsals by referring to her as his “prima donna” and crossed his arms rather than directing the music. “Once when I dropped a bar, I thought he was going to have another stroke,” she said. Rudolf Kempe, however, was her hero: “In [Strauss’s] Der Rosenkavalier, when Sophie has that high C sharp, he would give me time to breathe and would underpin me properly. He was just fabulous in the way he instinctively knew what you wanted in support.”
Joan Hildred Carlyle, a distant relation of the 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle, was born in Upton-on-the-wirral, Cheshire, on April 6 1931, the daughter of Edgar Carlyle, a stationery manufacturer, and his wife Margaret (née Williams). They later ran the Plas Draw hotel and country club near Ruthin, North Wales. As a small child she “used to sit in the back of the car and sing”.
She was educated at Howell’s School, Denbigh, and by the age of 15 was desperate to become a singer. Her parents sent her to study as a contralto, but after two years a specialist found she had strained her vocal cords so much she was in danger of losing her voice. To recuperate she was sent to a farm in Cheshire, spending the next few months in quiet solitude and passing the time by learning to drive a tractor.
When her voice returned she took lessons in London, now as a soprano, with Bertha Nicklass-kempner. She had an audition at Covent Garden, but was advised to return six months later. Instead, in 1953 she married John Cowap, a car designer, and gave birth to her first daughter.
Nevertheless, Joan Carlyle continued driving more than 200 miles each way from her family home in North Wales for weekly 30-minute lessons. Her parents thought she would be better off singing in musicals, but aged 23 she reauditioned for Covent Garden and was offered a contract.
She made her debut in 1955 as Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen with Joan Sutherland in the title role. Gradually she progressed through a wealth of small parts, including Chloe in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades in 1956 when she was noticed by one critic as “a soprano with a pretty, winning voice”. Eventually she emerged as a “highspirited” Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier with Régine Crespin as the Marschallin. Her only Glyndebourne appearance came in 1965 when she took over from Montserrat Caballé as Countess Almaviva in Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro.
Throughout the 1960s Joan Carlyle remained loyal to the Royal Opera, often turning down opportunities overseas. Nevertheless, she did spread her musical wings to other European houses, making her debut at La Scala, Milan, in 1968 as Sieglinde in Wagner’s Die Walküre.
Her loyalty to Covent Garden was rewarded with the roles of Eva in Wagner’s
Die Meistersinger, Desdemona in Verdi’s
Otello and the demanding part of Jenifer in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage with Alberto Remedios, also taking part in the first commercial recording of the work. Her final performances at Covent Garden were in 1976 as an anxious and frail Freia in Das Rheingold with a cast that included Valerie Masterson, Josephine Veasey and Robert Tear.
Joan Carlyle’s first marriage had been dissolved and in 1960 she married Robert Aiyar, a lawyer. In the late 1970s they moved to North Wales to take over her parents’ hotel, but the marriage ended in 1980. Covent Garden urged her to return, but their pleas were in vain. “As soon as I opened my mouth, I began to cry,” she said. “I was suffering from a broken heart. It took me eight years to regain my equilibrium.”
Later she settled in a small village near Wrexham, where she adored tending to her garden. In church she made a point of singing quietly to avoid attracting attention. Until a couple of years ago she taught a handful of singers.
Joan Carlyle is survived by a daughter from her first marriage and a daughter from her second; a son from her second marriage died at a few days old, a heartbreaking experience that she said informed the agonised scream she delivers on her recording of Puccini’s Suor Angelica when
her character learns of her child’s death.
Joan Carlyle, born April 6 1931, died October 31 2021