Elsie Jean MorisonAM (15 August 1924 – 5 April 2016) was an Australian operatic soprano.
Early life
Morison was born in Ballarat, Victoria, to Alexander and Elsie Morison.[1] As a child and teenager, she was interested in piano; however, her mother, who was a singing teacher, encouraged her in her vocal studies.[1] Morison was educated at Clarendon Presbyterian Ladies' College, followed by the Albert Street Conservatorium in Melbourne from 1943 to 1945.[1] Her teachers included Clive Carey, a visiting lecturer from England, with whom she continued studies at the Royal College of Music in London from 1947 to 1948.[1]
Morison took the leading soprano roles in Sir Malcolm Sargent's 'Glyndebourne' recordings of nine key Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas in the late 1950s and early 1960s where she continued to work with Richard Lewis and Marjorie Thomas.
Awards and recognition
In 1955, she received the Portuguese Order of Public Education. Her former school opened a memorial Elsie Morison Creative Arts Centre in 1985, and in 1999, she received the Order of Australia.[1]
Personal life
Her first husband was the British bass singer Kenneth Stevenson.[2] In 1963, she married the Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík (his first wife, the violinist Ludmila Bertova, had died in 1961), and decided to retire from performing. She did sing occasionally post-retirement, such as at a 1968 concert in Melbourne conducted by her husband, with her mother in the audience.[3]