Background
Holland was born Margaret Foster in Pedmore, a suburb of Stourbridge, the youngest of eight children.
Holland was born Margaret Foster in Pedmore, a suburb of Stourbridge, the youngest of eight children.
She attended Stourbridge High School and began clerical work at British Road Services in Kingswinford, later working as a telephonist in Birmingham for a firm of stockbrokers.
After beginning her singing career in the chorus of the Sadler"s Wells Opera in 1968, Holland starred in the Gilbert and Sullivan contralto roles with the Doctorate"Oyly Carte Opera Company for seven years, beginning in 1970. In later years, she performed in musical theatre and concerts. She began taking singing lessons and performed, at first, in some local musicals and with a Kingswinford-based male choir, the Gentlemen Songsters in Stourbridge.
She then joined the Midland Music Makers Grand Opera Society, an amateur operatic society, where she performed for three years, eventually playing Konchakovna in Prince Igor.
This was seen by a talent scout from Sadler"s Wells Opera. She debuted with Sadler"s Wells in September 1968, in the chorus, where she played in twenty-three operas.
In December 1970, she joined the Doctorate"Oyly Carte Opera Company. Her first role, in March 1971, was Lady Sangazure in their newly revived production of The Sorcerer, and she was soon performing major roles in ten of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, adding Little Buttercup in His Majesty’s Ship Pinafore, Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance, Lady Jane in Patience, the Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe, Lady Blanche in Princess Ida, Katisha in The Mikado, Dame Hannah in Ruddigore, Dame Carruthers in The Yeomen of the Guard, and the Duchess of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers.
She continued to play these roles for seven years, leaving the company in July 1977.
In 1975, she had the opportunity to re-create the roles of Lady Sophy in Utopia, Limited and the Baroness in The Grand Duke, which had not been performed professionally in Britain since the 1890s. She also sang the role of Little Buttercup at the Royal Command Performance at Windsor Castle. In later years, Holland performed in concerts both in Britain and elsewhere.
She appeared in the United Kingdom national tour of Evita in 1986–1987 and in Ivor Novello"s Perchance to Dream at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich.
She continued to perform in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and gave concerts at, among other places, the Stourbridge Town Hall. Holland died in 2014 at the age of 75, after a heart attack, at a nursing home in Streatham.