Amanda Juliet Holden (; 19 January 1948 – 7 September 2021) was a British pianist,

librettist A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major ...

, translator, editor and academic teacher. She is known for translating opera

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

s to more contemporary English for the

English National Opera English National Opera (ENO) is a British opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in E ...

, and for writing new librettos, especially in collaboration with

Brett Dean Brett Dean (born 23 October 1961) is an Australian composer, violist and conductor. Early life Brett Dean was born, raised, and educated in Brisbane. He attended Brisbane State High School. He started learning violin at age 8, and later stu ...

. She contributed to encyclopedias such as the ''New Penguin Opera Guide''.

Life and career

Amanda Juliet Warren was born in London, the daughter of Sir Brian Warren and Dame

Josephine Barnes Dame Alice Josephine Mary Taylor Barnes, (18 August 1912 – 28 December 1999), known professionally as Dr Josephine Barnes, was a leading English obstetrician and gynaecologist. She was the first female president of the British Medical Associ ...

. She was educated at

Benenden School Benenden School is a private boarding school for girls in Kent, England, in Hemsted Park at Benenden, between Cranbrook and Tenterden. Benenden has a boarding population of over 550 girls aged 11 to 18, as well as a limited number of day s ...

, and studied at

Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, located on a bank of the River Cherwell at Norham Gardens in north Oxford and adjacent to the University Parks. The ...

, with Egon Wellesz where she gained a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

(MA), at

Guildhall School of Music and Drama The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a music school, music and drama school located in the City of London, England. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz al ...

and a MA at the

American University The American University (AU or American) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Its main campus spans 90-acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, in the Spri ...

, Washington, DC. She also had degrees from the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...

(

ARCM Associate of the Royal College of Music (ARCM) was a professional qualification awarded by the Royal College of Music. Like the Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (LRAM), it was offered in teaching or performing. There is no obvious succes ...

and

LRAM Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (LRAM) is a professional diploma, or licentiate, formerly open to both internal students of the Royal Academy of Music and to external candidates in voice, keyboard and orchestral instruments and guitar, as ...

).Holden /Amanda, ''Who's Who'' (UK), 2012 She first worked as a freelance pianist and accompanist, teacher at the Guildhall School, and therapist from 1973 to 1986.

Librettos and other texts for the stage

Many of Holden's opera

translations were commissioned by the

(ENO). She translated Mozart's ''

Don Giovanni ''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; full title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legen ...

'' for

Jonathan Miller Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, comedian and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 19 ...

in 1985. For the ENO, she also translated Handel's '' Partenope'', '' Rodelinda'', ''

Ariodante ''Ariodante'' ( HWV 33) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The anonymous Italian libretto was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which in turn was adapted from Canti 4, 5 and 6 of Ludovico Ariosto's ''Orlando Furioso''. E ...

'', ''

Alcina ''Alcina'' (Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis, HWV 34) is a 1735 opera by George Frideric Handel. Handel used the libretto of ''L'isola di Alcina'', a work set to music in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he had acquired a year later during his t ...

'' and Agrippina, Donizetti's ''

Lucia di Lammermoor ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' () is a (tragic opera) in three acts by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian-language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's 1819 historical novel '' The Bride of Lammermoor''. ...

'', Rossini's ''

The Barber of Seville ''The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution'' ( ) is an ''opera buffa'' (comic opera) in two acts composed by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy ' ...

'', and Puccini's ''

La bohème ''La bohème'' ( , ) is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions '':wikt:quadro, quadri'', ''wikt:tableau, tableaux'' or "images", rather than ''atti'' (acts). composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto b ...

''. Holden translated

HK Gruber Heinz Karl "Nali" Gruber (born 3 January 1943), who styles himself HK Gruber professionally, is an Austrian composer, conductor, double bass player and singer. He is a leading figure of the so-called Third Viennese School. Career Gruber is said ...

's ''Gloria: A Pigtale'' in 2002, which critic

Bernard Holland Bernard Peabody Holland, III (born 1933) is an American music critic. He served on the staff of ''The New York Times'' from 1981 until 2008 and held the post of chief music critic from 1995, contributing 4,575 articles to the newspaper. He then b ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' found heavy-handed but "rescued by Amanda Holden's clever English version". She made a "highly acclaimed translation" of Puccini's ''

Madama Butterfly ''Madama Butterfly'' (; ''Madame Butterfly'') is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story " Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Lu ...

'' for David Freeman's production at the

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres ...

in 2011. Holden prepared the "deft" narration for a concert performance of Weber's ''

Der Freischütz ' (Friedrich Wilhelm Jähns, J. 277, Opus number, Op. 77 ''The Marksman'' or ''The Freeshooter'') is a German List of operas by Carl Maria von Weber, opera with spoken dialogue in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Johann Fried ...

'' presented by the

London Symphony Orchestra The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's orchestras, symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's ...

at the

Barbican Centre The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London, England, and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings a ...

in April 2012. She translated Gluck's ''

Orpheus and Eurydice In Greek mythology, the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice () concerns the pitiful love of Orpheus of Thrace, located in northeastern Greece, for the beautiful Eurydice. Orpheus was the son of Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope. It may be a late addition ...

'' for the St. Louis Opera in 2018,

Pascal Dusapin Pascal Georges Dusapin (born 29 May 1955) is a French composer. His music is marked by its microtonality, tension, and energy. A pupil of Iannis Xenakis and Franco Donatoni and an admirer of Varèse, Dusapin studied at the University of Pari ...

's ''Passion'' for its UK premiere at the Music Theatre Wales in 2018, and

Hans Abrahamsen Hans Abrahamsen (born 23 December 1952) is a Danish composer born in Kongens Lyngby near Copenhagen. His ''Let me tell you (Abrahamsen), Let me tell you'' (2013), a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, was ranked by music critics at ''The Guard ...

's ''The Snow Queen'' for Munich in 2019. Holden's librettos for contemporary operas include ''

Bliss BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C ...

'', for the Australian composer

which was premiered by

Opera Australia Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, New South Wales, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra runs for approximately eight months of the year, with t ...

. ''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

'' compared Holden's partnership with Dean in "long-distance collaboration" to the composer–librettist partnerships of Mozart and

da Ponte Da Ponte or dal Ponte is a topographic byname/surnameIris Shagrir, "The Medieval Evolution of By-naming: Notions from the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem", ''In Laudem Hierosolymitani'' (Shagrir, Ellenblum & Riley-Smith, eds.), Ashgate Publishing, 2007, ...

, and

Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; ; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer and conductor best known for his Tone poems (Strauss), tone poems and List of operas by Richard Strauss, operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Roman ...

and

Hugo von Hofmannsthal Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (; 1 February 1874 – 15 July 1929) was an Austrian novelist, libretto, librettist, Poetry, poet, Playwdramatist, narrator, and essayist. Early life Hofmannsthal was born in Landstraße, Vienna, th ...

. She wrote the libretto for

Mark-Anthony Turnage Mark-Anthony Turnage (born 10 June 1960) is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Life and career Mark-Anthony Turnage was born in Corringham, Essex on 10 June 1960. Turnage was the eldest of three children. His parents were lov ...

's '' The Silver Tassie'', which premiered at the ENO in 2000, and for which Holden and Turnage jointly received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera in 2001. She also wrote texts for plays, songs, concert works and music theatre.

Publications

Holden's publications include contributions to ''The Mozart Compendium'' in 1990, the ''New Penguin Opera Guide'' in 2001 and the ''Penguin Concise Guide to Opera'' in 2005. James Oestreich, writing in ''

'', described the ''New Penguin Opera Guide'' as a "valuable source" and "most impressive", though he would have liked the index to cover performers, places and events – rather than just the composers and librettists. Her works included: * Amanda Holden (ed.): ''The Penguin Concise Guide to Opera''. Penguin, reprinted 2005. * Amanda Holden (ed.): ''The New Penguin Opera Guide''. Penguin 2001. (Reprinted in paperback 2003) * Amanda Holden (ed.): ''The Penguin Opera Guide''. Penguin 1995. (Reprinted in paperback 1997) * Amanda Holden, Nicholas Kenyon and Stephen Walsh (eds.): ''The Viking Opera Guide''. (with CD-ROM) 1993

Personal life

Holden married writer and broadcaster

Anthony Holden Anthony Ivan Holden (22 May 1947 – 7 October 2023) was an English writer, broadcaster and literary critic, particularly known as a biographer of artists including Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, the essayist Leigh Hunt, the opera librettist Lorenzo ...

in 1971. They had three sons and divorced in 1988. She died on 7 September 2021, at the age of 73.

References

External links

* * * *
Amanda Holden
operascotland.org
The Snow Queen / Hans Abrahamsen
operanationaldurhin.eu 2021 {{DEFAULTSORT:Holden, Amanda 1948 births 2021 deaths Musicians from London Writers from London Alumni of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford British opera librettists Women opera librettists Alumni of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama American University alumni Associates of the Royal College of Music 20th-century English translators 21st-century British translators 20th-century English women writers 21st-century English women writers English women pianists