Rosina Raisbeck
Phyllis Rosina Raisbeck
Early life
Rosina Raisbeck was born
She ended her studies in 1946 by winning the Australian Broadcasting Commission's Concerto and Vocal Competition, and the Sun Aria Competition.
Performance career
After a concert tour of New Zealand, Raisbeck sailed for London with her husband James Laurie, whom she had married in 1943. A letter of recommendation from
Advised by the conductor
Raisbeck planned to tour Australia the following year with Benjamin Fuller's Italian Opera, but, finding that she was pregnant, cancelled the tour. After her son was born, she did not sing again until 1958, when she gave guest performances of Ortrud and the title role of Beethoven's Fidelio with the Elizabethan Trust Opera Company in Sydney. Returning to London she sang with Sadler's Wells Opera in 1959, as Senta, and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, as well as the Mother in the British premiere of Luigi Dallapiccola's The Prisoner, given by the New Opera Company at Sadler's Wells.
In 1961, she gave a dramatic performance of Kabanisha in Leoš Janáček's Káťa Kabanová. Then, having divorced her husband, she returned to Australia with her son.
For the next 10 years, Raisbeck sang wherever and whatever she could: a tremendously successful production of The Sound of Music, in which she sang the Abbess, with June Bronhill as Maria, was followed by Carousel. She gave concerts, and she sang in clubs and cabaret. Then in 1969 the Elizabethan Trust evolved into the Australian Opera; Raisbeck sang with the company from 1971 for the rest of her career.
Her first role was Marcellina in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, followed by Akhrosimova in Prokofiev's War and Peace (1973; the first opera performed at the Sydney Opera House); she scored triumphs as Mrs Begbick in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1975) and as Herodias in Richard Strauss's Salome (1976).
Raisbeck had sung in all three of the operas making up Puccini's Il trittico - as La Frugola in Il tabarro, as the Princess in Suor Angelica and as Zita in Gianni Schicchi - soon after joining the Australian Opera. In 1977, she sang the Princess again, opposite Joan Sutherland as Suor Angelica.
The Duchess of Plaza Toro in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers and the Countess in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades were both successful; so was Kabanisha (1980).
Raisbeck's career formally ended in 1985 with a much-admired performance of the First Prioress in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. She sang on for another three years, finally retiring in 1988, aged 72.
Death
She died on 23 December 2006, after a long illness, at age 90.
Honours
Raisbeck was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1977 New Years Honours.[2]
References
- ^ Sandved, Kjell Bloch (1957). The World of Music: A Treasury for Listener and Viewer. Waverley Book Company.
- ^ It's an Honour
- Obituary, Elizabeth Forbes, The Independent, 22 January 2007
- Obituary in Limelight magazine, March 2007, page 11.