Gillian Knight

Gillian Knight (born 1 November 1934) is an English singer and actress, known for her performances in the contralto roles of the Savoy operas. After six years from 1959 to 1965 starring in these roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, Knight began a grand opera career.

Knight joined Sadler's Wells Opera (now known as English National Opera) in 1968 and, in 1970, went on to the Royal Opera, where she performed numerous roles over a period of more than three decades. Knight has performed with many other opera companies in Britain, Europe and America and at houses internationally and has recorded many of her Gilbert and Sullivan and grand opera roles.

Knight was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, England, and educated in Birmingham. She won a five-year scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with May Blythe and Roy Henderson. She sang in concerts, oratorio and on television with the Linden Singers while still at the Academy.

Knight joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1959, going on tour immediately in eight of the leading contralto roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory. In September of that year, at the age of 25, she succeeded Ann Drummond-Grant as the company's principal contralto on Drummond-Grant's death. The Times wrote, "Many good Savoyards have regretted Gilbert's unkind lampooning of the unattractive elderly female, stouter than she used to be, with a caricature of a face and so on; and we have observed with gratitude that Buttercup, Ruth, Lady Jane and their equivalents are acted this season by a pleasing and personable young lady.... Miss Gillian Knight's Buttercup is in itself an iconoclastic impersonation." Before even beginning to tour with the company, her first performance with the company was to play the role of Little Buttercup in the company's recording of H.M.S. Pinafore released in 1960, the first Gilbert and Sullivan recording to include complete dialogue.