Audrey Mildmay

Grace Audrey Laura St. John Mildmay was born on 19 December 1900 in Herstmonceux, Sussex, England, the daughter of Sir Aubrey St. John Mildmay, a British Anglican priest. When Mildmay was three months old, her father accepted a parish in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada, where she spent her early years. She began her musical education studying piano before a singing teacher recognized the potential of her voice. Her first public performance came at age 18 in a children's operetta produced under the auspices of the Vancouver Woman's Musical Club. In 1924 she traveled to London to study with Walter Johnstone Douglas at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

During 1927 and 1928, Mildmay toured the United States and Canada in the role of Polly in a production of The Beggar's Opera, which brought her to Broadway in 1928. Following that tour she returned to the United Kingdom and joined the Carl Rosa Opera Company, where her roles included Musetta in La bohème, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, Micaëla in Carmen, Nedda in Pagliacci, and Zerlina in Don Giovanni, for which she earned £2 10s per week.

In December 1930, Mildmay's teacher Johnstone Douglas arranged for her to sing the part of Blonde in an amateur production of Act I of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The performance was hosted by John Christie, a music lover who had modified his house at Glyndebourne to accommodate concerts. Christie, a 48-year-old bachelor, was immediately taken with Mildmay, and the two married on 4 June 1931 in Queen Camel, Somerset. They honeymooned in Germany and Austria on an opera tour, during which Mildmay underwent an operation for appendicitis. The couple had two children: a daughter, Rosamond, born in October 1933, and a son, George, born in December 1934.

Prompted by Mildmay and her colleagues, Christie decided to construct a proper opera theatre at Glyndebourne rather than simply extend the existing Organ Room. The inaugural Glyndebourne Festival opened on 28 May 1934, with Mildmay singing Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro while two months pregnant with her second child. The conductor Fritz Busch required her to audition before awarding her the role, a condition she accepted willingly. Busch subsequently noted the quality of her voice in writing and stated that he would have engaged her for the Semperoper in Dresden. Two other key figures in the festival's founding were director Carl Ebert and Rudolf Bing, who joined initially in a general capacity before becoming director in later seasons. Mildmay went on to sing Zerlina at Glyndebourne in 1936 and Norina in Don Pasquale in 1939. The Canadian Encyclopedia described her voice as a light lyric soprano employed with much charm.

Mildmay's performing career extended beyond Glyndebourne throughout the 1930s. She undertook a concert tour of Germany, Hungary, and Austria in 1936 and gave opera performances in Belgium. She was invited to sing at the Salzburg Festival in 1939 but declined after consulting the Foreign Office. She also recorded several operas, among them The Marriage of Figaro in 1934, Don Giovanni in 1936, and The Beggar's Opera in 1940. That same year she appeared in a British touring production of The Beggar's Opera directed by John Gielgud, alongside Michael Redgrave and Roy Henderson. During a stop in Edinburgh on that tour, Mildmay remarked to Rudolf Bing that the city would be an ideal location for a festival, a comment that contributed to the founding of the Edinburgh International Festival, which Bing established in 1947 with the support of Mildmay and Glyndebourne.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Glyndebourne Festival was suspended until 1946. In July 1940, Mildmay relocated to Canada with her two children, a governess, and a goddaughter. Unable to receive financial support from Christie due to wartime restrictions, she supported the family by singing concerts throughout North America. Her final operatic appearance took place in Montreal in May 1943, when she sang Susanna under the direction of Sir Thomas Beecham. She and her family returned to the United Kingdom in May 1944.

After the war, Mildmay became involved with the Lewes Music Festival and served on the Music Panel of the Arts Council from 1947 to 1951. She and Christie also sat on the Council of a professional children's theatre that Glyndebourne established to produce plays for young audiences. Mildmay's health declined in her final years, and she was unable to perform during the 1947 Edinburgh Festival due to illness. She underwent surgery twice to address high blood pressure and to preserve her vision. She died at Glyndebourne on 31 May 1953, having requested that the 1953 Glyndebourne season open as scheduled the following week.