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Lyndsie Holland's career started in a garden shed. The youngest of a family of eight, she used to harmonise there with her brothers at their home in Stourbridge, Worcs., where she was born and brought up; although even then she wanted to go on the stage (she had already chosen her stage name!), she never thought that this ambition would be fulfilled, and certainly not as a singer. She herself admits that when she was in the school choir she was not particularly good.
On leaving school, she started work in the British Road Services office at Kingswinford, later moving to Birmingham as telephonist at a stockbrokers' office. It was almost by chance that she went to the Birmingham School of Music with a friend to have piano lessons, and, rather diffidently, asked the music teacher to recommend somewhere where she could have singing lessons.
Later she joined the Midland Music Makers, an amateur company specialising in grand opera, the great love in her life. It was while she was singing a principal role with them that a talent scout from Sadler's Wells Opera heard her and invited her to audition.
After two years in their chorus she heard, again by chance, that Christene Palmer was leaving the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and decided to ask for an audition; she was accepted without hesitation as the new principal contralto, and went from strength to strength.. She is the first to admit that the parts she played are "mostly real old bags", but she finds them a challenge and thoroughly enjoyed her life with the Company
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