Charlotte Sainton-Dolby

In October 1845 she sang at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, through the influence of Mendelssohn, who had been delighted by her singing in his oratorio St. Paul.

The contralto music in his Elijah was written for her voice, but she did not appear in that work until the performance at Exeter Hall on 16 April 1847.

[1] She was a principal soloist in the first English performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, directed by William Sterndale Bennett at the Hanover Square Rooms London on 6 April 1854 and again for the premiere of his Sacred Cantata The Woman of Samaria at the Birmingham Musical Festival in 1867.

She married the violinist Prosper Sainton in 1860, and in 1870 she retired from the career of a public singer, but two years afterwards started a vocal academy in London.

Her voice was of moderate power and of fine quality, but it was her dignified and artistic style that gave her the high place she held for so many years both in oratorio and ballads.