23 Facts About Eva Turner

Eva Turner was allotted increasingly important solo roles, and by 1920 was the company's prima donna.

Talent spotted by an assistant to Arturo Toscanini, musical director of La Scala, Milan, Turner was engaged to sing there in 1924, and then had an international career in Continental Europe, North and South America and at Covent Garden.

Eva Turner sang in a wide range of operas, including those of Wagner and Verdi, but was known above all for her performances in the title role of Puccini's Turandot.

Eva Turner was born on 10 March 1892 in Werneth, Oldham, the elder child and only daughter of Charles Turner, chief engineer of a cotton mill, and his wife, Elizabeth, nee Park.

Eva Turner attended Werneth council school until she was ten, when the family moved to Bristol.

In Bristol, Eva Turner was taken to her first opera, Il trovatore, performed by the Carl Rosa Company in 1903.

Eva Turner decided that she wished to make opera her career, and was supported by her parents, who paid for her to take lessons with the bass Daniel Rootham, who had been teacher to Clara Butt.

At the age of nineteen Eva Turner started a four-year course at the Royal Academy of Music, where she sang in Sir Alexander Mackenzie's opera The Cricket on the Hearth.

Towards the end of her time at the academy Eva Turner auditioned for Walter van Noorden, proprietor and conductor of the opera company that had fired her imagination in Bristol.

Eva Turner offered her a place in the chorus, with the prospect of promotion to solo parts.

Eva Turner began to study with Albert Richards-Broad, who had recently joined the management of the Carl Rosa Company.

Eva Turner had sung as a bass under Hans Richter at Covent Garden, and was an authority on voice production.

Eva Turner remained her coach, adviser and friend until his death, twenty-five years later.

Eva Turner had a villa built to her own design in Brusino Arsizio on Lake Lugano, where she based herself when performing in Italy.

Eva Turner was in the audience for the premiere at La Scala in April 1926 and first sang the part in December of that year at the Teatro Grande in Brescia.

In 1938 Eva Turner was among the sixteen leading singers of the day for whom Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his Serenade to Music, honouring the conductor Sir Henry Wood.

Eva Turner spent the war years singing in concerts for the armed forces and the radio, and at the Proms.

The critic in The Daily Telegraph said that Eva Turner astonished the entire audience.

At that point Eva Turner had no intention of retiring from the stage, but in 1949 she received an invitation from the University of Oklahoma to undertake a year's professorship.

Tooley writes that Eva Turner passed on "her wealth of experience with her inimitable generosity but with a ferocious expectation of hard work and high standards in return".

Eva Turner died in London on 16 June 1990 at the age of ninety-eight.

Eva Turner was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1962.

Eva Turner received fellowships or honorary memberships of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, Trinity College, London and St Hilda's College, Oxford and honorary degrees from the universities of Manchester and Oxford.