Joan Ingpen(1916-2007)
- Production Manager
Ingpen [née Williams], Joan Mary Eileen (1916-2007), musicians' agent and opera administrator, was born on 3 January 1916 at 5 Beverley Gardens, Golders Green, London, the daughter of John Hamilton Williams, civil engineer, and his wife, Daisy, née Howe. In 1919 her father was sent to Russia, reputedly to try to help the tsar and his family, but he disappeared without trace and was presumed dead.
Joan Williams studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, becoming an excellent pianist, but she did not feel good enough for a professional career. Instead she learned to type and worked in marine insurance. During the Second World War, however, she became assistant to Walter Legge, the classical music director of ENSA, which provided entertainment for British troops. On 7 March 1942 she married Noman Edward Ingpen (1918-1961), a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery (and son of Norman Cecil Ingpen, also an army officer). After the end of the war she helped Legge found the Philharmonia Orchestra, then in 1946 she founded her own concert agency, Ingpen and Williams. She divorced Ingpen (but kept his name professionally) and on 5 February 1948 she married Erich Alfred Diez (b. 1895/6), also a concert agent (and son of Friedrich Leo Diez, master tailor). The great German bass-baritone Hans Hotter was a witness at their wedding. This marriage also ended in divorce, and in 1958 Ingpen began a relationship with the actor Sebastian Lewis Shaw (1905-1994), son of Geoffrey Shaw, music teacher, which lasted until his death. She had no children.
Ingpen worked very hard to build a strong list at her agency. The singers she represented included Joan Sutherland and Geraint Evans, as well as Hotter, while among the conductors were Rudolf Kempe and Georg Solti. In 1961 Solti became music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and asked Ingpen to join him as controller of opera planning. She accepted, sold her agency to Howard Hartog, and in 1962 moved to Covent Garden, where her knowledge of singers and their roles was soon put to good use. The tenor Giuseppe di Stefano was due to give six performances as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème in 1963; as he was not in good health she engaged as cover the then unknown tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whom she had heard in Dublin; in the event di Stefano sang one performance, Pavarotti the other five, and she was credited with launching the latter's rise to fame.
Ingpen worked very closely with Solti during the decade he was at Covent Garden, and when he left so did she, taking up a new post as director of planning at the Paris Opéra in July 1971. As always, she began planning the season two years ahead, but though Ingpen got on well with the new managing director, the composer Rolf Liebermann, she found the bureaucracy of the state-funded Opéra extremely difficult to deal with. When, therefore, in 1978 she received a summons from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, she accepted immediately. In New York she had to work exceptionally hard, as the Met, unlike Covent Garden or the Paris Opéra, performed opera seven nights a week, with no evenings of ballet. She calculated that she had to cast 3000 singing roles a season, as well as covers of sufficient stature to go on in an emergency. She had a good working relationship with James Levine, the Met's musical director, but her insistence on planning so far ahead and her sometimes abrasive manner made her unpopular with the management. She stayed in New York for three seasons, until 1981.
For several years after her return, Ingpen became a talent spotter for the Met in Britain and continental Europe. She lived latterly in Hove and until his death with Sebastian Shaw, taking his name. She died at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, on 29 December 2007, of bronchopneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Joan Williams studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, becoming an excellent pianist, but she did not feel good enough for a professional career. Instead she learned to type and worked in marine insurance. During the Second World War, however, she became assistant to Walter Legge, the classical music director of ENSA, which provided entertainment for British troops. On 7 March 1942 she married Noman Edward Ingpen (1918-1961), a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery (and son of Norman Cecil Ingpen, also an army officer). After the end of the war she helped Legge found the Philharmonia Orchestra, then in 1946 she founded her own concert agency, Ingpen and Williams. She divorced Ingpen (but kept his name professionally) and on 5 February 1948 she married Erich Alfred Diez (b. 1895/6), also a concert agent (and son of Friedrich Leo Diez, master tailor). The great German bass-baritone Hans Hotter was a witness at their wedding. This marriage also ended in divorce, and in 1958 Ingpen began a relationship with the actor Sebastian Lewis Shaw (1905-1994), son of Geoffrey Shaw, music teacher, which lasted until his death. She had no children.
Ingpen worked very hard to build a strong list at her agency. The singers she represented included Joan Sutherland and Geraint Evans, as well as Hotter, while among the conductors were Rudolf Kempe and Georg Solti. In 1961 Solti became music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and asked Ingpen to join him as controller of opera planning. She accepted, sold her agency to Howard Hartog, and in 1962 moved to Covent Garden, where her knowledge of singers and their roles was soon put to good use. The tenor Giuseppe di Stefano was due to give six performances as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème in 1963; as he was not in good health she engaged as cover the then unknown tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whom she had heard in Dublin; in the event di Stefano sang one performance, Pavarotti the other five, and she was credited with launching the latter's rise to fame.
Ingpen worked very closely with Solti during the decade he was at Covent Garden, and when he left so did she, taking up a new post as director of planning at the Paris Opéra in July 1971. As always, she began planning the season two years ahead, but though Ingpen got on well with the new managing director, the composer Rolf Liebermann, she found the bureaucracy of the state-funded Opéra extremely difficult to deal with. When, therefore, in 1978 she received a summons from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, she accepted immediately. In New York she had to work exceptionally hard, as the Met, unlike Covent Garden or the Paris Opéra, performed opera seven nights a week, with no evenings of ballet. She calculated that she had to cast 3000 singing roles a season, as well as covers of sufficient stature to go on in an emergency. She had a good working relationship with James Levine, the Met's musical director, but her insistence on planning so far ahead and her sometimes abrasive manner made her unpopular with the management. She stayed in New York for three seasons, until 1981.
For several years after her return, Ingpen became a talent spotter for the Met in Britain and continental Europe. She lived latterly in Hove and until his death with Sebastian Shaw, taking his name. She died at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, on 29 December 2007, of bronchopneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
