Lyndsie Holland

Lyndsie Holland (12 March 1939 – 2 April 2014) was an English contralto and actress born Margaret Foster in Pedmore, a suburb of Stourbridge, the youngest of eight children. She adopted her stage name from the maiden names of her two grandmothers. Before pursuing a professional singing career, Holland attended Stourbridge High School and worked in clerical positions, first at British Road Services in Kingswinford and later as a telephonist for a Birmingham stockbroking firm. During this period she began taking singing lessons and performed in local musicals, sang with the Kingswinford-based Gentlemen Songsters male choir, and spent three years with the Midland Music Makers Grand Opera Society, an amateur operatic society, where she eventually took on the role of Konchakovna in Prince Igor. A talent scout from Sadler's Wells Opera attended one of these performances, leading to her professional debut with that company in September 1968. During her time with Sadler's Wells she performed in the chorus across twenty-three operas.

In December 1970, Holland joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, with which she would become closely associated for seven years. Her first role with the company, in March 1971, was Lady Sangazure in a newly revived production of The Sorcerer. She went on to perform major contralto roles in ten Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including Little Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore, Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance, Lady Jane in Patience, the Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe, Lady Blanche in Princess Ida, Katisha in The Mikado, Dame Hannah in Ruddigore, Dame Carruthers in The Yeomen of the Guard, and the Duchess of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers. In 1975, she had the opportunity to revive two roles that had not been performed professionally in Britain since the 1890s: Lady Sophy in Utopia, Limited and the Baroness in The Grand Duke. She also performed the role of Little Buttercup at the Royal Command Performance at Windsor Castle before leaving the D'Oyly Carte company in July 1977.

Holland's recordings with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Decca Records captured five of her principal roles. She recorded Katisha in 1973, the Queen of the Fairies in 1974, Lady Sophy and the Baroness in 1976, and the Duchess of Plaza-Toro in 1977. She also appeared as Little Buttercup in the company's 1973 ATV film of H.M.S. Pinafore. Her Broadway appearance came in 1976, during which she was associated with productions of H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Hot Mikado.

In her later career, Holland moved into musical theatre and concert performance. She appeared in the UK national tour of Evita between 1986 and 1987 and performed in Ivor Novello's Perchance to Dream at the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. She continued to perform in Gilbert and Sullivan works and gave concerts at venues including Stourbridge Town Hall. Holland died on 2 April 2014, following a heart attack, at a nursing home in Streatham, at the age of 75.