Isobel Buchanan – Opera singer – Soprano

b 1954, Glasgow, Scotland.

In 1971, aged 17, she received a scholarship to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where in 1974, she was awarded with Student of the Year prize. She also won the Governor's Recital Prize that same year.

She signed a three-year contract with The Australian Opera in 1975 to pursue her career in singing. The next year, she made her professional operatic debut as Pamina in the company's production of The Magic Flute. She was the youngest Principal Artist in the company's history.

She made her debut in England in 1978 at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, again as Pamina in a new production by John Cox.

In 1978, she sang Micaela in Carmen at the Vienna State Opera, conducted by Carlos Kleiber with Plácido Domingo as Don José and Elena Obraztsova as Carmen, in a production by Franco Zeffirelli. She continued adding to her repertoire with Sophie in Massenet's Werther and a Flower Maiden in Wagner's Parsifal at the Royal Opera House in 1979.

Since then, she has appeared at many other major opera houses and companies including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Scottish Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Hamburg State Opera, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, and the Cologne Opera. She has collaborated with many renowned conductors, including Georg Solti, Bernard Haitink, Andrew Davis, Colin Davis, Sergiu Celibidache, John Pritchard, Neville Marriner, Carlos Kleiber and Yehudi Menuhin.[citation needed]

The BBC made a documentary of her career in 1981. She featured in three-part series called Isobel which was recorded in August 1983 and aired on BBC the following April. In 1983 she played Diana in the BBC television production of Orpheus in the Underworld and also appeared in TV programmes such as Face the Music and Parkinson.

In 1990, she sang at HM The Queen Mother's 90th Birthday celebration at the London Palladium in a section dedicated to Scotland. She sang "My Ain Folk" and appeared with Her Majesty's PM John Spoore and actress Geraldine McEwan with a reading of recollections of childhood in Glamis.[citation needed]

Isobel is married to the Australian-born English stage actor Jonathan Hyde. They have two daughters; one of them is a British actress, Georgia King.

Source: Wikipeadia