Biography

PATRICIA KERN (1927-2015)

Born in Swansea, South Wales in 1927, Patricia Kern began her musical career as a child star, singing and tap-dancing in white top hat and tails, in cabarets and music halls throughout Wales and England. In the depression, Patricia was often the family breadwinner. Her father was a master shipwright and there was limited work on the Swansea docks. In the late 1930’s, she was offered an MGM contract, but her parents declined the offer rather than separate the family as it would have meant a move to Hollywood with only one parent, leaving the other at home in Wales with younger brother Terence Kern.

In the postwar years, she began to win singing competitions including a scholarship to study at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music, where she studied with the famous Welsh tenor Gwynn Parry Jones (1949 to 1952). Her first professional engagement was touring the entire length of Britain in an ancient Rolls Royce for the British Arts Council’s “Opera for All” (1952-55).

Her London debut with the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company (now English National Opera) was as the Witch in Dvorak’s Rusalka. She had been hired as the cover (understudy) and attended the final dress rehearsal. At the end of the rehearsal the director of the opera company went up to where she was sitting in the back of the theatre and informed her that she would be singing the premiere the following evening. This success was followed by creating headlines with the post war revival of Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella). She then undertook the other major Rossini roles: Rosina (The Barber of Seville), Isolier (Le Comte Ory) and Isabella (L’Italiana in Algeri).

Her other roles with Sadler’s Wells/English National Opera included: Iolanthe, Hansel, Cherubino, Pippo, Orlovsky, as well as Josephine in the premiere of Malcolm Williamson’s The Violins of Saint-Jacques. She also sang frequently with the Handel Opera Society (Ariodante, Rodelinda, Ottone, Semele), Welsh National Opera, and the Dublin Grand Opera.  Patricia made her Covent Garden debut in 1967 as Zerlina, and subsequently sang Cherubino in a new production of Le Nozze di Figaro in 1970 and then Suzuki in Madama Butterfly.

Her voice, with its spectacular range and extraordinary agility, defied classification, ultimately falling into the rare category of coloratura mezzo-soprano.

She made her Canadian debut as Cinderella in the Stratford Festival’s production of the Rossini opera in 1968. After many years of singing in Scotland with the Sadler’s Wells Company, she made her Scottish Opera debut with Cinderella in 1969 followed by roles in L'Incoronazione di Poppea, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Turn of the Screw, the title role in The Rape of Lucretia and the world premieres of Ian Hamilton’s The Cataline Conspiracy and Robin Orr’s The Weir of Hermiston.