My former singing teacher, Freda Hart, who has died aged 99, was gifted with infinite patience and kindness, but also with the ability to metaphorically yank pupils by the ankles and drag them back down to earth if their egos were becoming dangerously inflated.

She had a particular interest in the Alexander technique, which she used to encourage pupils to find their natural voice. She also had the wisdom to use more traditional teaching methods for students who were not comfortable with the technique. In particular, Freda inspired her pupils with a love of the composer Gerald Finzi’s song settings of Thomas Hardy’s poems. In the early 1980s she and her husband, Glyn Harris, a video technician, made a beautiful documentary on Finzi in consultation with his widow, Joy.

Born in Dartford, Kent, to John Hart, an engineer, and Lillian (nee Wallis), a teacher, Freda attended Dartford county school. In 1937, she went to the Royal Academy of Music in London, where her singing teachers were Frederick Austin and Rosina Buckman, and she was taught the piano by Sybil Barlow. Her study was disrupted by the second world war, and she spent periods teaching in Kent, and singing and playing for the troops, before graduating in 1946.

As a student she was regularly engaged to sing behind a screen, for the sabbath services at Central synagogue in Marylebone; she also sang in the choir at St Alban’s, Holborn, because the choirboys had been evacuated during the war. One Sunday she arrived to discover the church destroyed by a bomb.

After graduation she studied with the contralto Astra Desmond and sang in the BBC Chorus. In 1946 she was the soprano soloist in a recording conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham of A Song of the High Hills by Frederick Delius. About 10 years ago, a recording of this was to be featured on BBC Radio 3, but was dropped because of lack of time. After many complaints, the recording was rescheduled for the following week.

She returned to Dartford county school to teach music for three years, then taught in various London schools for another 10, after which she travelled to Chingola in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). She founded and directed her own music school there, and directed performances of oratorios, musicals, and even a production of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Among her pupils was her future husband, Glyn, who was working at the time in the copper mines, and his two daughters, Corinne and Michelle.

She returned to the UK from the newly independent Zambia in the late 1960s, and became the vocal tutor at the Birmingham School of Music, until 1983.

Freda had become interested in the Alexander technique in the early 70s, as she could see its potential use for singers. She and Glyn, who had married in 1977, created “diagnostic videos” of Alexander teachers working with singers, and arranged workshops and courses at a centre in Wales.

They “retired” to Totnes, Devon, in the mid-80s, but Freda continued teaching until she was in her 90s.

Glyn died in 1992. Freda is survived by Corinne and Michelle.