Felicity Lott was world famous and particularly appreciated France.Getty Images Europe
British soprano Felicity Lott died of cancer on Saturday at the age of 79. She was renowned worldwide and had a perfect mastery of the French repertoire.
17.05.2026, 17:5817.05.2026, 19:30
The great British soprano Felicity Lott died on Saturday at the age of 79his agent said on Sunday. The singer was very popular in the United Kingdom and also in France.
The artist revealed Monday in an interview with the BBC that she was suffering from terminal cancer discovered a year earlier. His agent Sue Spence said:
“Felicity Lott experienced her illness with great dignity and total acceptance. She remained very characteristically elegant and chic until the end.”
Interpret de Strauss, Offenbach and Mozart
During her four decades of career, this singer nicknamed “Flott” performed in operas and concert halls around the world, known for her interpretations of the works of Richard StraussJacques Offenbach or Mozart.
Born in 1947 in Cheltenham, in the west of England, this music lover began playing the piano at the age of five, then singing and violin at 12. She has étudié à la Royal Academy of Music and made her operatic debut in 1975, replacing Pamina at short notice in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
The one who performed regularly at the great classical music festival BBC Proms had been ennobled by Elizabeth II in 1996. She was also decorated with the Legion of Honor in France.
A rain of tributes
The Royal Ballet and the London Opera welcomed “one of the greatest sopranos of her timecelebrated throughout the world for the grace (…) and the pure beauty of her voice”, which had retained its “authenticity and self-deprecation” which was very British.
The Paris Opera also paid tribute to the one who “maintained a deeply emotional relationship with France“, after having spent a year as an English assistant in a high school near Grenoble before entering the Royal Academy. “It was there that she enrolled at the Grenoble Conservatory and met professor Elisabeth Maximovic, who detected a rare talent in her and encouraged her to become a singer,” explains the institution, which continues:
“Felicity Lott carried the French repertoire with incomparable diction, a unique sensitivity and a sincere love of French culture which earned her, throughout her career, the loyal admiration of the French public”
(btr/ats)
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