HOLDEN, Mrs Amanda Juliet nee WARREN (1948-2021)

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Obit in Daily Telegraph 22 September 2021 -  Amanda Holden, opera translator and librettist with ‘a blessed ability to write words that are easily singable’ – obituary (telegraph.co.uk)

She m 1971 (div 1988) Anthony Ivan HOLDEN b 1947 scion of the Holden Baronets (1919) being the son of the 2nd son of the 2nd Baronet.

EXTRACTS

Amanda Holden, opera translator and librettist with ‘a blessed ability to write words that are easily singable’ – obituary

She would start by making a literal translation, then her rendition would emerge, echoing the original, and always ‘to be heard, not read’

Amanda Holden, who has died aged 73, was a prolific translator and librettist whose work was heard in opera houses around the world; she was also the founder and editor of the Viking Opera Guide, working her way through hundreds of fascinating entries with her co-editors Stephen Walsh and Nicholas Kenyon.

Amanda Juliet Warren was born on January 19 1948, the daughter of Sir Brian Warren, medical officer to the Grenadier Guards and later Sir Edward Heath’s private physician, and his first wife Dame Josephine Barnes, a prominent gynaecologist and the first woman to be president of the British Medical Association.

She was educated at Benenden School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, reading Music under Egon Wellesz and Edmund Rubbra. As president of the university opera club she commissioned a translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon from her fellow student, Anthony Holden, who she married in 1971.

Her marriage to Holden was dissolved in 1988 and she is survived by their three sons. 

She is also survived by her partner, Andrew Clements, the music critic of The Guardian.

Amanda Holden, born January 19 1948, died September 7 2021