| Biography | Adele Leigh, made her name in leading operatic roles as a young lyric soprano with Covent Garden Opera in the 1950s, and went on to play the heroines in many Viennese operettas in the city of their birth, before becoming the wife of the Austrian ambassador in London.
Adele Leigh was born in London on June 15 1928. Her father walked out when she was about two and she was brought up in Highbury by her mother, Betty, and her Polish-Jewish immigrant grandparents. Adele was sent to Crouch End High School for Girls. Inspired by Madame Butterfly, which she saw with Joan Hammond and the Carl Rosa company, she decided that her vocation lay in opera.
Adele's mother decided that, before going any further, her daughter needed "finishing". After a year at The Orchard, a finishing school in Hertfordshire, and regular singing lessons with a Czech refugee, Julius Gutmann, Adele Leigh went on to train at Rada. She graduated after two years with the prize for "Charm and Grace of Movement".
This award failed to impress agents in New York, where Betty had decided they should go next. However, Adele managed to enrol at the Juilliard School, joining a course on the art of French song run by the English soprano, Maggie Teyte, with whom she continued to study on her return to London.
In 1948 she was recruited into the opera company at Covent Garden and found herself, at 19, the youngest principal among such future stars as Geraint Evans and Sylvia Fisher.
Covent Garden was lucky to have got her: while she was waiting to hear if she had been accepted, the impresario C B Cochrane signed her up to sing the lead in Vivian Ellis's new musical Bless the Bride. The Covent Garden offer arrived the following day. After much discussion, Cochrane agreed to release her from her contract.
Adele Leigh made her Covent Garden debut in the role of Countess Ceprano in Verdi's Rigoletto. She was first noticed as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro, soon adding Susanna and Cherubino to her repertoire. She went on to sing Pamina in The Magic Flute and Massenet's fallen heroine, Manon, a part which she was given a week to learn. She was an engaging Sophie in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, under Erich Kleiber, and sang the Marzelline in Beethoven's Fidelio (sung by the sultry Bulgarian soprano Ljuba Welitsch) under Rudolf Kempe.
Unusually for an opera star, Adele Leigh pursued a parallel career in showbusiness. She sang Summertime with Geraldo's orchestra on the BBC's General Overseas Service, and played successful variety seasons with Harry Secombe at the London Palladium and with Bruce Forsyth on tour.
After Covent Garden, she contracted an over-hasty marriage to the American bass-baritone James Pease, a widower 15 years her senior who then died from a heart attack while they were both singing at the Zurich Opera.
It was in Zurich that Adele Leigh first started singing the operetta roles that were to bring her fame at the Volksoper in Vienna, the city which became her home. Johann Strauss, Lehar and Kalman became her staple fare for the next few years.
In the summer of 1967 Adele Leigh was introduced to Kurt Enderl, a recently-widowed Austrian diplomat who was about to take up residence in Budapest as Austria's ambassador to Hungary. Ten days later he proposed, and they married in London that December. His ambassadorial career culminated in a posting to London.
During their time at the embassy in Belgrave Square, Adele Leigh hosted receptions and balls, and organised concerts and recitals. "You know, your second career is not so different from your first," her husband observed. "When you sing a role in opera, you act; and when you meet a politician whose views you and your country don't share, you also act - so you're acting on two kinds of stages."
Back in Vienna, soon after his retirement, Enderl died unexpectedly. Adele was devastated but, tempted by an offer from Stephen Sondheim to sing Heidi Schiller in his musical Follies, she returned to London.
In her later years she taught at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and was a talent-spotter for organisations which help promising young singers. |