Charlotte Sainton-Dolby

Charlotte Helen Sainton-Dolby, born Dolby, was an English contralto who also distinguished herself as a teacher and composer. She was born and died in London, in 1821 and 1885 respectively, and her career unfolded during Victorian musical life, in which the oratorio and the ballad were in great demand.

From 1832 she studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she won a King's Scholarship in 1837. While still a student, in 1840, she was one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Female Musicians. Her debut as a soloist took place at a Philharmonic Society concert on 14 April 1842. Felix Mendelssohn was so impressed by her singing that he arranged for her to appear at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Concerts during the winter of 1845–1846, where she first appeared on 25 October 1845. The composer dedicated to her the English edition of his Six Songs, Op. 57, and reportedly wrote the contralto part of Elijah with her in mind.

Following her success in Leipzig she performed in France and the Netherlands, and she soon became a much sought-after interpreter of ballads and oratorios throughout Great Britain. In 1860 she married the violinist Prosper Sainton and, ten years later, she retired from public performance to devote herself to composition and teaching. In 1872 she published a tutor for English singers and opened a vocal academy in London, which gave frequent concerts, often featuring her own works.

Her catalogue includes some sixty-eight songs, duets, choral pieces and arrangements, as well as four cantatas, among them the most widely known, The Legend of St Dorothea (1876). Her legacy combines the practice of the ballad and the oratorio with vocal pedagogy, and shortly after her death the Royal Academy of Music founded a scholarship in her memory.