[1][2] Her father, George Oliver Wiggins, was a tailor and carpenter and her mother, Violet Grace, was an employee of the Johnnie Walker whisky company.
[2] Her solo career began with “a promising Musetta” in La bohème and followed this by playing The Foreign Women in The Consul by Gian Carlo Menotti.
[6] That same year, she made her first (and only) appearance with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Alexander Gibson as Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco with concert performances in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
[3] In 1961, she played the role of the May Queen in Edward German's Merrie England, and was Tatyana in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin in the same year.
[6] Despite being firmly established, June travelled with the tenor Alberto Remedios to Bulgaria to take part in the Sofia International Competition for young opera singers, winning the gold medal,[2] and giving her wider recognition.
[1] At the start of the 1963 season, she sang the part of Agathe in Der Freischütz, and the following year, with Davis conducting, played Ilia in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Idomeneo.
[5] June's 1965 performance as the countess in the production of The Marriage of Figaro conducted by Charles Mackerras received strong praise from the critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor.
[6][8] She made her first appearance in the United States in 1974 as Ellen Orford in a production of Britten's Peter Grimes with the San Francisco Opera,[2][7] and also toured Germany and Eastern Europe.
[5] June performed in a 1976 production of Der Rosenkavalier and in that year's Hoffnung Music Festival, she stripped as Salone in Let's Fake an Opera, revealing herself to be Fidelio about to shoot Kenneth Woollam's Otello in Lohengrin's armour.
[6] June's final years with the English National Opera saw her return to mezzo-soprano rules,[1] and she played the role as a strident Katy in Leoš Janáček's production Káťa Kabanová with Mackerras again acting as conductor.
[5] Following the death of her husband of more than 30 years, the architectural engineer David Cooper in 1982,[2] she became an active member of the London Spiritual Mission in Notting Hill Gate and became a soloist.