Turner’s parents were both musical: her father, the chief engineer in a cotton mill, was her first singing teacher. When she was ten she was taken to the theatre for the first time, to hear a performance by the Carl Rosa Opera Company. She was entranced and henceforth determined to be an opera singer. Her parents actively encouraged this ambition, sending her to have lessons from Dan Rootham, the teacher of Clara Butt (qv). From 1911 to 1915 she was a student at the Royal Academy of Music, where her singing teachers were Mary Wilson, Gigia Levy and her husband Edgardo Levy.

After graduating, Turner joined the chorus of the Carl Rosa Company. She pushed to be given solo parts and was soon singing small roles such as the Priestess / Aida. Not satisfied with her progress however, she was advised by the tenor E.C. Hedmondt to study with the Australian bass Albert Richards-Broad, an expert on voice production. His tuition was productive – indeed so successful was their partnership that he continued to coach her for almost twenty-five years, until his death – and soon she was singing principal roles such as Micaëla / Carmen and Musetta / La Bohème.

In 1920 the company had a four-week residency at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, during which she sang a large repertoire that included, in addition to the above, Leonora / Il trovatore, Venus / Tannhäuser and the title role in Madama Butterfly. In the following year’s residency Turner sang the title role of Tosca and Elsa / Lohengrin; and in 1923 her portrayal of Butterfly was highly praised by The Times (‘her singing was clear and strong’) while her Eva / Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was described in the same newspaper as ‘very assured and acted with great vivacity’. Other roles she sang with the company on tour included Donna Anna / Don Giovanni, Amelia / Un ballo in maschera and Marguerite / Faust.

For its 1924 London season the company moved to the New Scala Theatre and presented the first performance of Fidelio since Beecham’s revival in 1910, with Turner cast as Leonore; The Musical Times described her as ‘ a most remarkably gifted young woman’. One of her performances of Butterfly during this season was heard by the conductor Ettore Panizza, who insisted that she audition for Toscanini at La Scala, Milan. This was successful, with the maestro engaging her on the spot to sing Freia and Sieglinde / Der Ring des Nibelungen during the 1924–1925 season.

After the conclusion of La Scala’s season Turner toured Germany with an Italian company during 1925, singing the title role in Aida, Tosca, Santuzza / Cavalleria Rusticana and the Trovatore Leonora in Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, Munich and Mannheim. The following year, 1926, she sang Aida in Genoa, the title role of La Gioconda in Trieste and of Turandot at Brescia (shortly after this opera’s premiere in Milan), immediately followed by further performances as Turandot in Trieste. The composer Franco Alfano, who had completed Puccini’s score, described her as the ideal Turandot.

Now Turner made her debut in Vienna, sang Minnie / La fanciulla del West in Lisbon and (during 1927) the Fidelio Leonore at Turin and at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, where she also appeared as Militrisa in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tsar Saltan. She was invited to sing Turandot, Aida and Santuzza in the 1928 International Season at Covent Garden, where local audiences and critics were unprepared for the extraordinary power and brilliance of her singing, particularly as Turandot. During the 1928–1929 season she created a similar effect in Chicago, where she sang Sieglinde, Amelia, and the Trovatore Leonora and was hailed by critic Eugene Stinson as ‘the greatest singer known to Chicago’. She returned to La Scala to sing Turandot in 1929, followed by Leonora / La forza del destino at the San Carlo, Naples and the title role in Mascagni’s Isabeau at the Verona Arena, which she repeated in Rome during 1930 with the composer conducting.

Further appearances at the Covent Garden International Season included Sieglinde in 1930 and Aida in 1933, after which Turner began to appear more frequently in Great Britain, while also singing in northern Italy. During 1935 she sang Brünnhilde / Siegfried with the London and Provincial Opera Society (LPOS) at Covent Garden with Albert Coates conducting; also Amelia and Agathe / Der Freischütz. She first sang Isolde / Tristan und Isolde in Edinburgh in 1936 with the same company. During the Coronation Season of 1937 at Covent Garden she appeared as Turandot opposite Giovanni Martinelli (some excerpts were recorded). London first heard her Isolde with Coates conducting the LPOS in December of the same year, and in 1938 she was the lead soprano in the first performance and recording of Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music.

Following highly acclaimed performances of Turandot in Chicago (where the critic of the Chicago American, Herman Davies hailed her as ‘one of the great dramatic sopranos of the day’) and Aida in London during 1939, and the subsequent outbreak of World War II, Turner settled in London. Here she participated in numerous radio broadcasts and concerts, many for the armed forces, but lost all her possessions when her flat was bombed in 1944.

After the war Turner sang Turandot with the young Covent Garden Opera Company during the 1947–1948 season in London and on tour. One of her London performances became the subject of an article in an American magazine, on the strength of which she was invited to become visiting Professor of Voice at the University of Oklahoma; intending to stay for just a single year, she remained there until 1959, after which she taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London until her mid-eighties, numbering Amy Shuard and Gwyneth Jones among her pupils. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1962.

When she sang with Martinelli in 1937 he commented that she must have a maestro and also practise daily. This was perfectly correct, since Turner did indeed practise daily and also received daily tuition from Richards-Broad which, as Martinelli was suggesting, were probably the keys to her success. As Turner’s relatively few recordings clearly demonstrate, she possessed an extraordinarily ‘true’ soprano voice throughout the whole vocal range, which she used with great skill. She was one of the very few British singers to enjoy an international career at the highest level during the inter-war years.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Singers, Naxos 8.558097-100).