- 1950s: Employed for BBC programmes of Bach’s music.
- 1955: She sang Bach arias at the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, London
- 1959: She won the Grand Prix du Disque for her music.
- 1961: She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.
- 1969: At the Swansea Festival in 1969 she gave the first performance of Grace Williams’s song cycle 'Billows of the Sea', which the composer dedicated to her.
- 1970: Performed Mahler’s 'Kindertotenlieder' to widespread acclaim at Carnegie Hall in New York.
- 1972: Famous for her recordings of the Angel in Elgar’s 'Dream of Gerontius' and her part in the first complete recording of Vaughan Williams’s 'Riders to the Sea' under Meredith Davies.
- Worked with many celebrated conductors, including Georg Solti, Benjamin Britten, Bernard Haitink and Herbert von Karajan.
- 1976: She appeared regularly in opera at Covent Garden and Salzburg and with the Welsh National Opera.
- 1978: She received a C.B.E.
- 1985: She retired from her singing career in 1985 and returned to Pembrokeshire where she was able to continue with her passion for gardening.
'From an early age she played the piano and was fond of music, but her professional ambition was to qualify as a
psychotherapist. Instead, she enrolled at the Royal Academy, studied with Caroline Hatchard and joined the BBC Singers.' – 'Obituary: Helen Watts, contralto', Gramopohone, 23 October 2009 – https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical%20music%20news/article/obituary-helen-watts-contralto