When a singer has been dead for less than fifty years – leaving her in the limbo of being neither a safely ‘historical’ figure nor a strictly ‘contemporary’ one – the strength of her enduring reputation can be undecided. And that’s been my experience of Jennifer Vyvyan, the English soprano who was a serious star in the middle years of the 20th Century but who died, still young with more to give, in 1974.
Mention the name and you find committed enthusiasts who worship her memory, collect her recordings, and would take up arms on her behalf. But there are others who have little idea who she was or what she did. And even among those who know their way around 20th Century English music, their awareness of her might not reach beyond the fact that she had some involvement with the operas of Benjamin Britten and sang countless Messiahs in the 1950s.
In truth, her involvement with Britten was significant and seminal: she was, for a while at least, his soprano of choice and the recipient of key roles like the Governess in Turn of the Screw, Tytania in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Lady Rich in Gloriana, all of which she brought to the stage for the first time. And as a significant figure in Britten’s world, regularly appearing at the Aldeburgh Festival, she found herself drawn into the wider realms of English contemporary music, working with composers like Malcolm Williamson, Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Bliss and Gordon Crosse.