Eleanor Houston

New Zealand soprano, Eleanor Houston, was born in Wellington in 1916 and attended the NSW Conservatorium of Music. In 1947 she won the Sun Aria Competition. The Sun Aria award proved to be a stepping stone to a successful career as a dramatic soprano. She toured New Zealand and Australia with the Italian Opera Company singing Santuzza as well as in productions of Wagner and Verdi operas. In London, Eleanor Houston joined the ranks of many other great Australian contemporaries singing as a Principal Artist with Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden opera companies from 1950-1955, where she was particularly acclaimed as a singer of Mozart. She travelled and performed extensively, including in Scotland, Wales, Italy and South Africa. She returned to Australia in 1959 and began teaching singing on the South Coast. In mid-1967 she and her husband, moved to Canberra. In the late 1960s she began working towards the establishment of an opera company in Canberra. She died in 2014.