Partner Anne Wood
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Johanna Peters (3 January 1932 – 27 May 2000) was a Scottish mezzo-soprano who played a prominent role in British operatic life during her 40-year career, first as singer, and later as a distinguished voice teacher at the Guildhall School of Music. As a singer, she was particularly known for her intelligent portrayal of a wide variety of character parts and created the roles of Hippolyta in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Widow Sweeney in Nicholas Maw's The Rising of the Moon. For many years she and her companion, Anne Wood, ran their own small touring company, Phoenix Opera.[1][2][3]
Johanna Peters was born in Glasgow and studied at the National School of Opera in London. In 1958, she appeared as Jocasta in a performance by the Oxford University Opera Club of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. The following year she made her mark at Glyndebourne, where she gave her first professional performances, as Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro, returning in the same part in 1962. She sang Dame Carruthers in The Yeoman Of The Guard, at the Tower of London in Anthony Besch's staging of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic in 1962, and the same year took the title part in Arne's Artaxerxes at the St Pancras Festival, a performance that received glowing reviews. When Britten's English Opera Group visited Russia, Peters undertook the role of the wise Bianca in The Rape Of Lucretia, and the eccentric Florence Pike in Albert Herring, both roles suited her ability to characterise a part. The same year, she appeared in London, as Mrs Baggott in Britten's Let's Make An Opera. Her Mrs Peachum at the Bankside Globe in 1972, and her Nurse in Boris Godunov with Covent Garden in 1974, when Christoff was Boris, were both successes. For Phoenix Opera, she was a charming Nancy in a rare revival of Flotow's Martha in 1973. One of her last appearances was in Wolf-Ferrari's The School For Fathers, with Phoenix Opera at the Camden festival in 1983, where she was quite outrageous as the tetchy, tippling Margarita. On radio, Peters took part in the first broadcast of Phyllis Tate's The Lodger. In concert, she was often heard to advantage in Monteverdi, Purcell and Handel. She also broadcast frequently as part of the lively duo she had formed with the soprano Patricia Clark. Her voice was an unusual instrument with an individual timbre, particularly strong in the lower register, and she deployed it with real care, authority and artistry over a wide range of notes and roles. Later, from her pupils, she demanded a similar commitment - as she did when she acted as an adjudicator. Peters loved to exchange views on the operatic situation, and expressed her own in strong language laced with a pronounced Glaswegian accent. She was always frank in her opinions, but her approach was consistent and constructive. For many years, she and Anne Wood, who predeceased her, shared a home in St John's Wood, London, where they were always generous hosts. It was a place where opera was discussed ad infinitum. In the 1980s, they were trustees of the Peter Pears Singing Award, both having had close connections with Aldeburgh.
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