Erin Wall, soprano who delighted audiences at the Edinburgh Festival and the Proms – obituary

Erin Wall, who has died of breast cancer aged 44, was a Canadian-born soprano who made a great impression on British audiences; she was a finalist in the 2003 Cardiff Singer of the World competition, a moving soloist in Verdi’s Requiem on the closing night of the 2013 Edinburgh Festival, and a noble Jenifer in a Proms performance of Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage that same year.

Erin Wall’s appearance in a concert performance of Massenet’s opera Thäis at Edinburgh in 2011 was a musical revelation. Although she had the biggest part, she was the only soloist to sing from memory, communicating directly with the audience. “She also uncorked a voice in its prime: luscious pianissimos, but also a magnificent high D shaking all available chandeliers in the Festival Theatre,” observed one critic.

The singer, however, insisted that the music of Mahler and Strauss lay at the heart of her repertoire. “I joke that they’re my other husbands,” she told Broadway World. “Or sometimes I say, they’re my boyfriends, because I’m already married. My dead boyfriends.” The title role in Strauss’s Arabella was a particular favourite, with Erin Wall identifying with the character’s “fun, chatty, flirty moments”, and she hoped one day to sing the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier.

Erin Marie Wall was born in Calgary, Alberta, on November 4 1975, the daughter of Michael and Suzanne Wall, professional musicians who survive her with a sister, Shannon. She was brought up in Vancouver and learnt the piano and flute but had no ambition to go into music, only taking her first voice lessons in her final year of high school, where she was interested in jazz.

After being turned down by every music college she applied to, including some that advised a different career, she worked on her voice for another year and tried again with more success. She studied at Western Washington University and Rice University, Texas, and in July 2002 made her British debut in Britten’s War Requiem at St Paul’s Cathedral conducted by Sir Andrew Davies.

Her appearance at the Singer of the World competition brought superlative comments from the critics about her being a “platinum-class” soprano with a “stylish, silvery and fine-grained” voice. Although she lost out on the main prize to the Finnish baritone Tommi Hakala, her international career was born.

Erin Wall’s big break came at Chicago Lyric Opera, where she spent the early years of her career. In 2004 she was understudying the role of Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni when the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila was taken ill the day before opening night. “I had a costume fitting and a sing-through,” she recalled breezily. Thereafter she appeared in opera houses and concert halls on both sides of the Atlantic.

Like many singers she grew used to performing while not at her best, often rehearsing with jet lag. She sang through two pregnancies, the sleep-deprived early years of parenthood, a miscarriage and after falling down a flight of stairs. She continued to sing during cancer treatment, describing her concerts as “like taking a vacation from cancer world”.

Her final British appearance was in January with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, her voice soaring over the final Chorus Mysticus at Symphony Hall. Last month she was heard as Ellen Orford in a recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes on the Chandos label, having performed the work to a standing ovation at the Royal Festival Hall in December 2019.

Erin Wall, who completed a New York marathon on her 43rd birthday, is also survived by her husband, Roberto Mauro, who is director of artistic planning at Canadian Opera Company, and by a son and a daughter.

Erin Wall, born November 4 1975, died October 8 2020