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The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

‘Call Me Flott’: A Tribute to Felicity Lott

  26th May 2026

26th May 2026


The acclaimed lyric soprano Felicity Lott, who has died at the age of 79, was an example of that rare breed among international singers: someone who combined star quality, wit, intelligence and humanity. During her half-century career she stood out for the refinement, clarity and textual responsiveness she brought to the music of Mozart and Richard Strauss, at a time when specialism in the former and sheer vocal power and OTT theatricality in the latter were increasingly the norm. These same strengths characterised her wider repertoire, not least her explorations of French mélodie and comic operetta, and they earned her the love and admiration of friends, colleagues and audiences, among whom she was universally and affectionately known as ‘Flott’.

Felicity Ann Emwhyla Lott was born in Cheltenham in 1947 to a family of keen amateur musicians. As a child she studied piano, while developing a love of languages alongside music; at Royal Holloway, University of London, she read French and Latin, and a year spent in Grenoble deepened her love of French culture, as well as determining her to pursue a musical path. On her return to London, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music, and won the Principal’s Prize on graduating in 1973.

Her early career was not exactly smooth: she was thrice rejected for the chorus at Glyndebourne, before eventually singing the Countess in Strauss’s Capriccio on tour in 1976. This was her breakthrough moment, but her appearance the previous year as a stand-in Pamina in The Magic Flute at English National Opera had already drawn her to critics’ attention and won their praise for her diction, luminosity of tone, poise and stage presence.

In the music of Richard Strauss, she brought character and a lightly-carried aristocratic bearing where others offered more overt opulence. As well as the Countess and Arabella, her outstanding role was, of course, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, above all in the Vienna production immortalised on video (but, alas, currently out of the catalogue) under the inspired direction of the legendary Carlos Kleiber. It was one of her career-defining roles, while her accounts of Strauss’s orchestral songs are scarcely less miraculous, again bringing a welcome focus and intelligence to music that is too often reduced to wave upon wave of cloying opulence.

Flott’s early enthusiasm for Gallic culture made her one of her generation’s finest interpreters of French art song, earning critical plaudits on both sides of the Channel in Fauré, Poulenc and Reynaldo Hahn. Her long collaboration with pianist Graham Johnson was one of the great postwar recital partnerships, and she was also a founding member of the Songmakers’ Almanac, which was so influential in transforming British attitudes to and enthusiasm for song recitals in the 1970s and 1980s.

Avoiding the pitfalls of migrating into more heavyweight repertoire such as Italian bel canto opera or Wagnerian music drama, she instead moved in time to operetta and comic roles, where her sense of wit, impeccable timing and gift for self-parody made her a natural. Her gifts as a comedienne were evident in her singular performances of La Belle Hélène and The Merry Widow, to the surprise and delight of her fans. She also excelled in such roles as an achingly tender Anne Trulove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (in the celebrated Glyndebourne production featuring designs by David Hockney).

She was a familiar figure in Seaford, East Sussex, close to her beloved Glyndebourne, where she made her home with her actor husband, Gabriel Woolf. In the street, she cut an unmistakable figure: tall, slender, friendly and always elegantly poised yet unassuming, without hauteur but every inch a dame (which honour duly came along in 1996). Over some four decades she was the ‘darling of Glyndebourne’, appearing in every season there between 1976 and 1990. She inspired new generations of singers through masterclasses and competitions, and even after stepping back from fully-sung roles she found new life in the spoken-word repertoire. As well as her damehood, she was a recipient of the French Légion d’honneur and the title of Bayerische Kammersängerin at the Bavarian State Opera.

From Strauss and Stravinsky to Poulenc’s La Voix humaine and Fiordiligi in Mackerras’s underrated yet immensely stylish Così fan tutte (Telarc), Felicity Lott’s operatic recordings are selective but all treasurable. Yet her artistry is arguably heard at its most distilled in the genre of song, whether in the lieder of Schubert and Strauss, the mélodies of Poulenc and Hahn, or her welcome ventures into the English song repertoire. To all these and more she brought a combination of idiomatic stylishness, intelligence and an almost conversational intimacy and tenderness.

Felicity Lott’s announcement, on her 79th birthday and just days before her death on 15 May, of her terminal cancer diagnosis was expressed with characteristic grace and candour. She is survived by her husband, and by their daughter Emily. Her voice lives on in the memories of her friends, colleagues and legions of fans, as well as in her recordings, a precious and radiant legacy from one of the great lyric sopranos of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

A few recommended recordings:

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