Negress Singer NZ Tour

Ella Lee, a young Negro soprano, who has risen to world fame at a meteoric pace in the last three or four years, will be doing a concert tour of New Zealand during June.

In Wellington she will sing as soloist with the NZBC Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday, June 9, and give a recital at the Town Hall on Saturday, June 20

In 1960 Ella Lee went from Los Angeles to attend master classes in Bayreuth. While studying in this Bavarian centre of music, her dramatic soprano voice so impressed visiting musicians that she was immediately offered two contracts to sing in the operatic seasons in Israel and Berlin.

The first appointment took her to the Israel National Opera Company where she sang Aida. Then she joined the Berlin Komische Opera and sang as Tosca. Aida and Tosca have proved her most outstandingly successful roles, but she has established a reputation in other operatic lead roles, including that of Titania in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Although her voice and her histrionic powers make Ella Lee an Ideal operatic soprano, she is by no means limited to operatic work. At the Hollywood Bowl she sang Bess in the Gershwin classic and she has a repertoire of spirituals and other American songs.

Ella Lee's flawless German pronunciation has, no doubt, contributed to her success as a singer of lieder. Some of her most enthusiastic reviews have come from German critics, and the highlight of her career to date was in the Berlin premiere of Britten's War Requiem, when she sang with Fischer-Dieskau and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Of her Edinburgh Festival recital last year, the Scotsman said: "Ella Lee possesses a remarkable voice, a richly individual and subtle warmth of tone extends over her whole vocal range."