This donation is from Eunice and David Dicken. Many thanks to you both.
Ruth Anne Petter (5 Jan 1934 - 28 Dec 2019)
Donate in memory of
Ruth AnneLeicester Hospitals Charity
- Location
- Great Glen Crematorium London Road Leicester LE8 9DJ
- Date
- 13th Jan 2020
- Time
- 4.30pm
January 5th 2021
Today would have been Mum's 87th birthday. But instead she decided to take her exit 4 days before the beginning of 2020. Perfect timing. For so many reasons I think she would not have enjoyed 2020 - Coronavirus and Boris, to name a couple, though not necessarily in that order!
But here is something for you all to enjoy - a slideshow of pictures of Mum's life, put together by her friend, Clare Thorpe. Thanks Clare, this is beautiful.
Clare has hosted the slideshow and you should be able to view by clicking on the link below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vjOjU1jFRq37v0SW5g9n-FBW2hw9Qpej/view
Happy birthday, Mum.
Love from Jon, Rupert & all your friends.
Welcome to the memorial webpage for Ruth Petter, set up by her sons Jon and Rupert. Below you can read a short biography of our mum, see some photos of her and listen to the beautiful music she chose herself for her funeral (unfortunately this template doesn't allow us to add live weblinks for each piece, but you can copy and paste each link into a browser to hear it).
The music includes the song Legacy, which Jon wrote for Mum shortly before she died and which is performed by his band deliBass, a version of Somewhere over the Rainbow recorded specially for the funeral by Mum's former pupil, dear friend and 'honorary daughter' Meryl Thomas, and a recording of the opening movement of Bach's Magnificat sung by the choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford, featuring a 12-year-old Rupert.
You'll also find the text of the two poems she chose, which were read beautifully by her dear friends John and Jill Branwell.
You can also leave a comment or memory of Ruth, and see a slideshow put together by our AV genius friend Darren Davidson for her wake (thank you Darren!), that includes clips of Ruth from a 1980 BBC documentary about one of her singing pupils.
Our thanks to everyone who was able to join us for Mum’s send-off on January 13th, and all the many other well-wishers we have been in touch with since Mum died who shared sympathy and happy memories with us. Thanks also to all those who have made generous donations to our preferred charity, Leicester Hospitals Charity, in recognition of the extraordinary care and kindness Mum received over many stays in Glenfield Hospital over the last two years of her life, and the amazing support given there to family and friends who shared her last days.
Always with us Mum.
Biography
Ruth was born in 1934 in Manchester, to parents Ernest and Rosa, who had met while singing in the Manchester Choir. She was their second child, with a sister, Mary, ten years older.
Ruth’s family home was filled with music, with Rosa often accompanying Ernest’s fine tenor voice on the piano for guests. Ruth would listen to her father’s large collection of classical 78s, sometimes adjusting the speed when she decided the conductor hadn’t got it right.
During World War II, she was evacuated twice, first with her family to the Isle of Man, and later, aged six, on her own to rural Wales to stay with a local family for three years. As a child, wherever she sang, she was always chosen to be a soloist, but it was in Wales that her precocious talent really came to light, when despite her tender years she won an eisteddfod poetry and music competition, singing in Welsh.
She returned to a new family home in Macclesfield, by now a wilful and moody child who was often in trouble at school. She was championed however by her inspiring music teacher Miss Bowden, and at 12 played the role of Cherubino in a school production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.
At 14, Ruth was sent to study at the Ursuline Convent Tildonk in Belgium in an attempt to correct her unruly ways. She was deeply unhappy at the strict institution, but a compensation was the many opportunities she found to sing in church, and she was spotted there by a Belgian radio executive, who would later open the door to the world of opera.
Ruth returned home when she was 16 and worked for three years to save the money to go to music college in Manchester, meanwhile having singing lessons every Saturday. Engaged briefly, she nearly moved to Tanzania with her fiancé Arnold, but broke it off.
Aged 20, Ruth won a scholarship to Dartington School of Music in Totnes, but found the teaching a disappointment, and after a year left for London. Sharing a flat and working as a temp shorthand typist, she took singing lessons with several eminent teachers, including Oriska Gareb, who Ruth always referred to reverentially as ‘Madame’, and credited with transforming her voice. Ruth would rise at 6am every day to practise, have three weekly lessons with Madame during her lunch breaks, and practise again each night.
A three-year scholarship to London’s Opera School followed, during which Ruth won her first professional engagements, singing a concert at the Italian Embassy and in two productions at the Royal Court Theatre, one of which drew an early plaudit from her beloved Guardian newspaper. The radio executive who had heard her sing at the convent also got in touch, inviting her to audition at Brussels’ opera house The Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, where she won a role.
Soon afterwards, Ruth married Derek Mellor, a Macclesfield lad she’d first met playing cricket when she was 14. She had met him again aged 19, and a friendship that began with her giving him French lessons slowly grew into love. They married in Macclesfield in December 1959.
Professional engagements continued to roll in. Ruth spent several months in Brussels in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and sang in Mozart’s Requiem at the Royal College of Music. More roles and recitals followed, and then the game-changing news that world-famous opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli wanted to meet her. He cast her as Flora in a production of La Traviata that would tour the great opera houses of Europe.
Sadly, before the tour began, Ruth suffered a breakdown that saw her hospitalised for several months. One of the pressures contributing to her severe depression was the dilemma of whether to pursue what would undoubtedly be a highly demanding career or have a family, and Ruth decided to rest her singing ambitions, and soon had her sons Jonathan, in 1964, and Rupert, in 1967.
She started singing again, and after she moved with her family to Leicester in 1970, started teaching. Before long she earned a reputation as a highly skilled and passionate teacher and took a position at Leicester University’s music department. Despite continuing to battle depression, she threw herself enthusiastically into the city’s cultural life and made many lifelong friends, as well as finding time to care for her elderly, widowed mother, who had also moved to Leicester.
With both sons grown up, Ruth made the decision to end her difficult 40-year marriage, marking the beginning of her new life chapter with an adventurous three-month solo trip to Australia. Moving to a new house, she found new work, continued to travel often, and dedicated more of her time to her ever-growing circle of cherished friends, with her reading group and bridge club two great sources of loyal, enduring companionship.
Ever young at heart – as unfailingly indicated by her wardrobe – she bonded for life with many of her sons’ friends on her frequent visits to them in London, attending many of Jon’s bands’ gigs and getting involved with a young actors’ group which she offered free vocal production coaching that often transformed their singing abilities. After Jon and his wife Fran settled in Australia, Ruth would often pay them extended visits, relishing her new role as ‘Oma’ to Jon and Fran’s three children Max, Lulu and Gus and joining family holidays.
Even in her last years, when her underlying illness limited her more and more, she fought courageously to maintain as full and connected a life as possible. As often as she could, she would summon the energy to meet with friends, animatedly discuss politics with anyone who would listen, go to the cinema to watch movies or live transmissions of operas from London and New York, and, as she had all her life, read The Guardian every day.
Ruth will be lovingly remembered, and greatly missed.
Ruth's musical choices
Entrance music: Legacy by Delibass
https://soundcloud.com/delibass/legacy-mpc4000-v5/s-9R6ay
1. Magnificat, from Magnificat in E flat major by Johann Sebastian Bach
Performed by the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford and the Academy of Ancient Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQG9T5Ac-h0
2. An die Musik, by Franz Schubert
Performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZZqZTKoFcM
3. La Maja y el Ruisenor, from Goyescas by Enrique Granados
Performed by Victoria de los Angeles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1gDsw2DcJ8
4. Somewhere over the Rainbow, from The Wizard of Oz by Harold Arlen
Performed by Meryl Thomas
https://soundcloud.com/jonatfunkydad/somewhere-over-the-rainbow
5. Offertoire, from Requiem by Gabriel Fauré
Performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Choeurs Elisabeth Brasseur and Orchestre de la Societé des Concerts du Conservatoire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSSiXrJhHKA
6. Liebestod, from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner
Performed by Birgit Nilsson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PlC2sBlPOU
7. Ol’ Man River, from Show Boat by Jerome Kern
Performed by Frank Sinatra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnZBfw-s1-A
8. Hab mir’s gelobt, from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss
Performed by Renée Fleming, Barbara Bonney and Susan Graham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnJOnruXpo4
Closing music: The Lark Ascending, by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Performed by Nigel Kennedy and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2HrbLTaEVA
Slideshow including BBC clips
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6lqv8gj8q0cl38/Ruth%27s%20Slideshow.m4v?dl=0
POETRY
Business Girls by John Betjeman
From the geyser ventilators
Autumn winds are blowing down
On a thousand business women
Having baths in Camden Town
Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
Steam's escaping here and there,
Morning trains through Camden cutting
Shake the Crescent and the Square.
Early nip of changeful autumn,
Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,
At the back precarious bathrooms
Jutting out from upper floors;
And behind their frail partitions
Business women lie and soak,
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke.
Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!
Promised Land by Michael Rosen
A family arrived and said they had papers
to prove that his house was theirs.
No, no, said the man, my people have always lived here,
my father, grandfather .... and look, the garden,
my great-grandfather planted that.
No, no, said the family, look at the documents.
There was a stack of them.
Where do I start? said the man.
No need to read the beginning, they said,
turn to the page marked ‘Promised Land’.
Are they legal? he said, who wrote them?
God, they said, God wrote them, look -
Here come His tanks.
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