Obituary: Librettist, Translator & Pianist Amanda Holden Dies at 73

By Francisco Salazar

On Sept. 7, 2021 librettist, translator, and pianist Amanda Holden died at the age of 73.

Born in London, on Jan. 19, 1948, Holden’s father, Sir Brian Warren, was a highly civilized man with a great love for music and flowers. Her mother, Josephine Barnes, was a distinguished gynecologist and outspoken campaigner for women’s health who was later made a dame.

After leaving Benenden school in Kent, Holden studied in Munich with Maria Landes-Hindemith and spent almost every evening at the opera. During that time works were performed mainly in German. She would go to Oxford where she led the Oxford University Opera Club.

Holden would later take on the accompanist course at the Guildhall School of Music and became an accomplished pianist. In 1974 she established the music department at Charing Cross hospital’s center for children with learning difficulties.

Her first opera translation came with “Don Giovanni,” for Jonathan Miller at the English National Opera, launching yet another career in opera translations. In total, she created more than 60 opera translations throughout her career. She was “praised for her acute sense of style, for her adroit rhyming, and for her profound musicality.”

At the same moment, she conceived the idea of a reference work on opera that was to be an enormous scholarly enterprise. She worked on the project with Stephen Walsh, Nicholas Kenyon, and Rodney Milnes. Peter Mayer at Penguin eventually decided to go with the idea, and Holden recruited and monitored more than 100 contributors from all over the world.

The result first appeared in 1993 as “The Viking Opera Guide,” which currently being re-edited for an online version, while a more streamlined variant is available on Amazon Kindle as The Opera Guide.

Holden was also a librettist and worked with Brett Dean on “Bliss” and Mark-Anthony Turnage on “The Silver Tassie.” She also wrote the libretto for “Family Matters.” For her work as a librettist, Holden ended up winning the Olivier Award.

The librettist and translator is survived by her partner, Andrew Clements, her sons, and four grandchildren.

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