THE AUSTRALIAN soprano June Bronhill will be remembered with affection by habitués of Sadler’s Wells in the 1950s and 1960s, where her lively presence and bright, beautifully produced soprano voice made her indispensable in operetta.

Her singing of more exacting parts such as Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Gilda in Rigoletto, Norina in Don Pasquale and the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute persuaded many that, had she wished, she could have made a bigger career in mainstream opera.

When she sang Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor with the Covent Garden company on tour in Oxford in 1959 it was as a substitute for Sutherland, and she survived the comparison with credit.

Bronhill was born June Gough in Broken Hill, New South Wales, and in 1950 won a singing competition which inspired her friends and neighbours to raise a sum of money which, together with her prize money, enabled her to travel to London for further study. In gratitude she adopted for professional purposes an elided version of the name of her place of birth.

She was engaged in 1954 by Sadler’s Wells Opera and made her debut as Adele in Die Fledermaus. Her success in such parts proved immediate and durable, and she made her mark also in Orpheus in the Underworld and La Vie Parisienne by Offenbach. She became particularly associated with Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow, which she sang on tour in Britain and in Australia in 1960. When she retired she had appeared in the part more than 200 times.

In 1961 Bronhill sang the name part in the British premiere of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, and the following year she returned to Australia for a successful production of The Sound of Music. Back in London once more she sang Saffi in Strauss’s The Gipsy Baron, and in 1974 there followed more Hannas at the Coliseum. As late as 1979, she sang Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus) for the State Opera of South Australia.

Rather short and not really a beauty, Bronhill nevertheless had a vitality and liveliness that are well captured by the operetta recordings she made for EMI. She was appointed OBE in 1976. Sadly, her last years were clouded by deafness and ill health. She was married to the producer Richard Finney, with whom she had a daughter.

June Bronhill, opera and operetta soprano, was born on June 26, 1929. She died on January 25, 2005, aged 75.