My mother, Rachelle Delarosa, who has died aged 86, was a singer in West End musicals in the 1960s and early 70s, and was in the chorus at the Sadler’s Wells Opera in London during the 50s.
For many years she also made a living as a versatile club entertainer and a classical music lieder singer in small venues across Britain, before switching to teaching and eventually setting up a jewellery business.
The daughter of Rayner (nee Coster) and Simon Danser, Rachelle was born into a Jewish family in Edmonton, north London. Her father owned a factory that made children’s shoes. After Down Lane Central school in Tottenham, Rachelle was encouraged by her parents to go to secretarial college, but she attended only half-heartedly and showed more interest in singing and in her volunteer activities with the Young Communist League.
After taking some singing instruction she signed up to a theatrical agent in 1951 and from the mid-50s appeared regularly at Sadler’s Wells, including as a member of Sir Thomas Beecham’s chorus.
After changing her surname mid-career to Delarosa, she got her first big West End break in the chorus of the musical Desert Song, which starred John Hanson, at the Palace theatre in 1967. Other roles followed in Mother Goose, starring Stanley Baxter at the King’s theatre, Edinburgh (1970), and in Showboat at the Adelphi theatre in London (1971), where, as a representative of the actors’ trade union Equity, she successfully campaigned for female ensemble members to be paid the same as men.
Her career on the stage came to an end shortly after that, when she became pregnant with me, after which she decided, as a single mother, to turn to teaching English to foreign students in Ramsgate, Kent. She also derived some income from renting out her house to tenants and continued to sing occasionally in clubs.
In 1988 she moved to Birmingham to set up a jewellery business and had some success with her idea of making “bond rings” for couples who had no intention of getting married but wanted to demonstrate some kind of commitment. However, within a couple of years she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had to retire from work in 2000.
Years of ill health followed, but she was fortified by her Christian Spiritualist beliefs and retained her kind personality, her humour and her warmth.
She is survived by her two children, Caroline and me.
