The mezzo-soprano Anne Howells, who has died aged 81, was much loved and admired by audiences and critics alike. It was doubtless her remarkable stage presence that inspired the then editor of Opera magazine, Rodney Milnes, reviewing her in the title role of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène for Scottish Opera in 1995, to describe her as “the Cleopatra of the lyric stage”. Referring to her opulent, warm tone, Milnes also admired her ability “to reduce an audience to helpless laughter with the barely perceptible flick of an eyebrow”.
The combination of those stage skills and a vocal delivery of the highest order (maturing over the years but seemingly never tiring) ensured her enduring popularity.
