Janet Baker Quotes

Dame Janet Abbott Baker was born in Hatfield, South Yorkshire, England. She is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer. She was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which spanned the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus, Les Troyens. She published a memoir, Full Circle, in 1982. In 1991, she was elected Chancellor of the University of York. She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1970 and appointed to Dame Commander in 1976. She received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize of Denmark in 1979.