Sophie Adele Wyss (5 July 1897[1] – 25 December 1983[2]) was a Swiss soprano who made her career as a concert singer and broadcaster in the UK. She was noted for her performances of French works, many of them new to Britain, for giving the world premieres of Benjamin Britten's orchestral song cycles Our Hunting Fathers (1936) and Les Illuminations (1940), and for encouraging other composers to set English and French texts. Among those who wrote for her were Lennox Berkeley, Arnold Cooke, Roberto Gerhard, Elizabeth Maconchy, Peter Racine Fricker, Alan Rawsthorne and Mátyás Seiber.
- ^ Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., 1954, vol. IX, p. 377
- ^ "Deaths". The Times. London, England. 29 December 1983. p. 18.
'Gyde'. On Dec 25th, 1983 peacefully at Bognor Regis aged 86, Sophie Adele Gyde (née Sophie Wyss), widow of Captain Arnold Gynde [sic] and mother of Arnold and Humphrey.