Early years Lawson was born in
Wolverhampton, the daughter of Alexander Lawson, an artist, and his wife Florence,
née Thistlewood. She was educated in Wolverhampton and
Vevey, Switzerland. She made her first appearance on the London opera stage in 1920 as the Countess Almaviva in
The Marriage of Figaro at the
Old Vic. The
Times reviewer wrote that Lawson was one of three singers who "made us all feel the truth that there is nothing in the world quite so beautiful as Mozart's airs for the soprano voice". In the same year she appeared as a soloist at the
Royal Albert Hall with
Astra Desmond and others in the London Ballads Concerts series. She sang at
Rutland Boughton's
Glastonbury Festival, creating the role of Guinevere in his opera
The Round Table (August 1920). Her other stage roles in 1920 and 1921 included one of the three Genii in
The Magic Flute, Marguerite in
Faust, and Bessie Throckmorton in
Edward German's
Merrie England.
D'Oyly Carte principal In January 1922 Lawson made her
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company debut, as a guest performer during the company's London season at the
Prince's Theatre in London, succeeding
Sylvia Cecil in the title role of
Princess Ida. The proprietor of the company,
Rupert D'Oyly Carte, invited her to become a full-time member, and during the rest of the 1921–22 tour she took on the roles of Patience in
Patience, Casilda in
The Gondoliers and Elsie Maynard in
The Yeomen of the Guard. and Yum-Yum in
The Mikado in July 1923. In
The Gondoliers she sometimes played Gianetta rather than Casilda, and switched to the former part permanently in January 1927. In the same month she took over the role of Josephine in
H.M.S. Pinafore. At the end of the 1927–28 season Lawson suffered vocal problems that caused her to leave the company temporarily and undergo surgery. She made a complete recovery but was not able to return to singing until later in 1928, by which time the company had departed for an eight-month tour of Canada. She toured Britain in the role of Lili in
Lilac Time before rejoining D'Oyly Carte on the company's return in June 1929. She left D'Oyly Carte in June 1931 to look after her mother, who was unwell. With the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, she recorded five of her roles: Princess Ida (1924), Gianetta (1927), Elsie Maynard (1928), Phyllis (1929) and Patience (1930). She also recorded the Plaintiff in
Trial by Jury (1927), though she never played the part on stage.
Later years On the death of her mother in 1933, In 1935 she toured Australia and New Zealand, appearing in many of the
Gilbert and Sullivan soprano roles with the
J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company. During the war she presented a series of programmes for the armed forces network, mixing reminiscence and musical extracts. In 1944 Lawson was elected vice-president of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society and frequently joined Society meetings and events. Her autobiography,
A Song to Sing-O!, with foreword by
Sir Malcolm Sargent, was published by Michael Joseph in 1955.
The Times said that the book "gives a delightful picture of those happy days in the operas, with
Henry Lytton,
Bertha Lewis,
Leo Sheffield and
Darrell Fancourt". ==Notes==