Kathleen Mary Ferrier CBE (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English contralto singer who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the classical works of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar. Her death from cancer, at the height of her fame, was a shock to the musical world and particularly to the general public, which was kept in ignorance of the nature of her illness until after her death.

The daughter of a Lancashire village schoolmaster, Ferrier showed early talent as a pianist, and won numerous amateur piano competitions while working as a telephonist with the General Post Office. She did not take up singing seriously until 1937, when after winning a prestigious singing competition at the Carlisle Festival she began to receive offers of professional engagements as a vocalist. Thereafter she took singing lessons, first with J. E. Hutchinson and later with Roy Henderson. Following the outbreak of the Second World War Ferrier was recruited by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), and in the following years sang at concerts and recitals throughout the UK. In 1942 her career was boosted when she met the conductor Malcolm Sargent, who recommended her to the influential Ibbs and Tillett concert management agency. She became a regular performer at leading London and provincial venues, and made numerous BBC radio broadcasts.

In 1946 Ferrier made her stage debut in the Glyndebourne Festival premiere of Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia. A year later she made her first appearance as Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, a work with which she became particularly associated. By her own choice, these were her only two operatic roles. As her reputation grew, Ferrier formed close working relationships with major musical figures, including Britten, Sir John Barbirolli, Bruno Walter and the accompanist Gerald Moore. She became known internationally through her three tours to the United States between 1948 and 1950 and her many visits to continental Europe.

Ferrier was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 1951. In between periods of hospitalisation and convalescence she continued to perform and record; her final public appearance was as Orfeo, at the Royal Opera House in February 1953, eight months before her death. Among her many memorials, the Kathleen Ferrier Cancer Research Fund was launched in May 1954. The Kathleen Ferrier Scholarship Fund, administered by the Royal Philharmonic Society, has since 1956 made annual awards to aspiring young professional singers.

The Ferrier family originally came from Pembrokeshire in South West Wales. The Lancashire branch originated in the 19th century, when Thomas Ferrier (youngest son of Private Thomas Ferrier of the Pembrokeshire Regiment) settled in the area after being stationed near Blackburn during a period of industrial unrest. Kathleen Ferrier was born on 22 April 1912, in the Lancashire village of Higher Walton where her father William Ferrier (the fourth child of Thomas and Elizabeth, née Gorton) was the head of the village school. Although untrained musically, William was an enthusiastic member of the local operatic society and of several choirs, and his wife Alice (née Murray), whom he married in 1900, was a competent singer with a strong contralto voice. Kathleen was the third and youngest of the couple's children, following a sister and a brother; when she was two the family moved to Blackburn, after William was appointed headmaster of St Paul's School in the town. From an early age Kathleen showed promise as a pianist, and had lessons with Frances Walker, a noted North of England piano teacher who had been a pupil of Tobias Matthay. Kathleen's talent developed quickly; in 1924, she came fourth out of 43 entrants at the Lytham St Annes Festival piano competition, and in the following year at Lytham she achieved second place.

Because of William's impending retirement and the consequent fall in the family's income, Ferrier's hopes of attending a music college could not be realised. In August 1926, she left school to start work as a trainee at the GPO telephone exchange in Blackburn. She continued her piano studies under Frances Walker, and in November 1928 was the regional winner in a national contest for young pianists, organised by the Daily Express. Although unsuccessful in the London finals which followed, Ferrier won a Cramer upright piano as a prize.

On 10 March 1929, she made a well-received appearance as an accompanist in a concert at Blackburn's King George's Hall. After further piano competition successes, she was invited to perform a short radio recital at the Manchester studios of the BBC, and on 3 July 1930 made her first broadcast, playing works by Brahms and Percy Grainger. Around this time she completed her training and she became a fully fledged telephonist.

In 1931, aged 19, Ferrier passed her Licentiate examinations at the Royal Academy of Music. In that year she started occasional singing lessons, and in December sang a small alto role in a church performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. However, her voice was not thought to be exceptional; her musical life centred on the piano and on local concerts, at King George's Hall and elsewhere. Early in 1934 she transferred to the Blackpool telephone exchange and took lodgings nearby, to be close to her new boyfriend, a bank clerk named Albert Wilson. While at Blackpool she auditioned for the new "speaking clock" service which the GPO was preparing to introduce. In her excitement, Ferrier inserted an extra aspirate into her audition, and was not chosen for the final selection in London. Her decision in 1935 to marry Wilson meant the end of her employment with the telephone exchange, since at that time the GPO did not employ married women. Of Ferrier's career to this point, the music biographer Humphrey Burton wrote: "For more than a decade, when she should have been studying music with the best teachers, learning English literature and foreign languages, acquiring stage craft and movement skills, and travelling to London regularly to see opera, Miss Ferrier was actually answering the telephone, getting married to a bank manager and winning tinpot competitions for her piano-playing."