Lesley Garrett

Lesley Garrett, CBE (born 10 April 1955) is an English soprano singer, musician, broadcaster and media personality.

She is noted for being at home in opera and "crossover music".

Garrett was born in the town of Thorne, near Doncaster (then in the West Riding of Yorkshire), into a musical family.

She attended Thorne Fieldside Infant and Junior Schools and Thorne Grammar School.

As she grew up she inherited her family's love of music.

Her grandfather Colin Wall was a classical pianist; her father Derek worked as a railway signalman and then as a schoolteacher at Hatfield Woodhouse Primary School, eventually going on to become a headmaster.

They lived nearby just south of the village; her mother Margaret (née Wall) was a talented singing seamstress and became the school secretary at Lesley's primary school.

She has two sisters, Jill and Kay, one step-sister, Louise, and two step-brothers named Robert and Nicholas.

While a student at the Royal Academy of Music she worked as a life model, something of which she is still proud.

Garrett has had an extensive music career.

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and an alumna of the prestigious National Opera Studio, she won the Decca Prize of the Kathleen Ferrier Award in 1979, thereby launching her career.

Her professional debut, in 1979, was as Amor in Orontea at the music festival in Batignano.

She subsequently sang, in 1980, Alice in Le comte Ory at the London Coliseum and Dorinda in Orlando at the Wexford Festival, in 1981, also at Wexford, the title role in Zaide, in 1982 Sophie in Werther with Opera North and in 1984 Damigella in L'incoronazione di Poppea at Glyndebourne.

From 1984, as principal soprano at English National Opera, she became well known for her performances in productions of the operas Serse, Le Nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Die Fledermaus and The Mikado.

Garrett has performed across the world, in countries throughout Europe, and also the United States, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea.

She has also sung opera and pop classics with Bryan Ferry, Eurythmics and Mick Hucknall to celebrate the arrival of the new century on Millennium Eve in the grounds at the Royal Observatory and National Maritime Museum.

Garrett has performed at several FA Cup Finals, including the 2000 Final, the last to be held at the old Wembley Stadium, the 2007 final held at the new Wembley Stadium (alongside Sarah Brightman), and the 2008 Final (alongside Katherine Jenkins).

In 2002 Garrett was appointed a CBE for her services to music.

The programme was recorded at the Opera In The Park concert which had taken place in the grounds of Temple Newsam, West Yorkshire on 19 July 2003.

In 2004, Garrett was one of the participants in the first series of the celebrity talent contest Strictly Come Dancing; she and her dance partner Anton du Beke finished third.

In the same year she took part in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, a genealogy documentary series, in which she journeyed through her home town of Thorne in search of her family history.

She was delighted to discover that the musical gene stretched far back and had run in her family for several generations: her maternal grandfather made a living playing the piano with a small orchestra that accompanied silent films at cinemas in and around Sheffield.

On Christmas Day 2004, BBC Two broadcast Lesley Garrett – Music from the Movies, co-starring her with Ruthie Henshall, Michael McCarthy with the backing of the Opera North orchestra.

She played the lead role of Hanna Glawari in the Welsh National Opera's production of The Merry Widow, which toured the United Kingdom in 2005.

Garrett is a veteran of Dictionary Corner on the Channel 4 game show Countdown, and in June 2005 it was thought that she was to become one of the show's rotating guest hosts while Richard Whiteley was recovering from illness.

After Whiteley's death, however, the plan for rotating guest hosts was abandoned and Des Lynam took the role for the next fifteen months.

In February 2005, Garrett was selected to be one of the judges for BBC's Comic Relief does Fame Academy, and in May she hosted and sang at the 2005 Classical BRIT Awards at the Royal Albert Hall on ITV.

In 2006 she sang the role of Mother Abbess in Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of The Sound of Music.

She was a regular panellist on the ITV daytime show Loose Women during 2006; she featured there again in 2009 and 2010, before returning in May 2014.

Garrett also appeared on This Morning and Loose Women in 2007, to perform a song from her latest album When I Fall in Love.

In 2008, she joined the cast of Carousel as Nettie Fowler.

The production toured the UK and then transferred to the West End's Savoy Theatre.

Garrett did not appear on Countdown again until October 2009.

She was also awarded with a BASCA Gold Badge Award in October 2010, in recognition of her contribution to music.

She also sang the British national anthem on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in 2012 after Bradley Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, though her performance was not universally appreciated.

In 2013 she returned to opera with the monodrama La Voix humaine for Opera North.

She created the role of Val in Pleasure, the first opera by Mark Simpson, directed by Tim Albery and premiered at the Howard Assembly Room by Opera North, in April 2016.

Garrett is a member of the board of the English National Opera and a vice president of Harrogate International Festivals.

A great-grandfather was a travelling musician, working across northern England in the 19th century, playing to workers in pubs and clubs.

During the First World War he entertained troops on the piano.