Dorothy Bond

Dorothy Bond, born Dorothy Irene Bond in approximately 1921, was an English coloratura soprano who also appeared on Broadway during the late 1920s. She died on 20 November 1952 at the age of 31 in a road accident near Leicester.

Bond received her early musical training at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she studied piano and cello. When she expressed a desire to pursue singing, Professor Evelyn Langston advised her to postpone vocal study until she reached the age of 20. By the mid-1940s she had developed a coloratura voice that established her reputation in the concert hall. Her Broadway career preceded this classical prominence, with stage appearances between 1927 and 1930 that included the musicals Enchanted Isle and Ripples.

Her association with conductor Sir Thomas Beecham proved central to her recording career. In 1948 she took part in Beecham's recording of Frederick Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet, singing the roles of Vreli as a child and the Gingerbread Woman. The following year she contributed the final floated high D to a recording of the Sleepwalking Scene from Verdi's Macbeth, conducted by Beecham, with the remainder of the role sung by Margherita Grandi. Also in 1949, Bond was the soprano soloist in a BBC Proms performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's A Pastoral Symphony, a role she reprised at the Proms in 1952 under Sir Malcolm Sargent.

In 1949 Bond participated in a recording of Ernest Bloch's Avodath Hakodesh, known as the Sacred Service, conducted by Bloch himself. In 1950 she recorded the role of Olympia for the Powell and Pressburger film of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann, made under Beecham at Shepperton Film Studios. The role was performed on screen by dancer Moira Shearer, while Bond supplied the voice. Decca released the recording on LP in 1951 after Beecham's legal efforts to prevent its release were unsuccessful. In 1951 she also recorded Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn, BWV 152, under conductor Karl Haas.

With her second husband, violinist Tom William Jenkins, Bond recorded a number of songs and arias, among them "O luce di quest'anima" from Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, Eric Coates's "Bird Songs at Eventide," the Waltz Song from Edward German's Tom Jones, and Olympia's Song from The Tales of Hoffmann.

Bond was married twice. Her first husband was Michael Dobson, born in 1923 and died in 1992, who served as principal oboist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; they had a daughter named Ann. In 1951 Bond married Tom William Jenkins, a violinist born in 1910 who died in 1957, and the couple had a son together. Bond died later that same year on 20 November 1952. She had used the surnames Dobson and Jenkins at various points in her life, though she remained professionally known as Dorothy Bond throughout her career.