Muriel Lucy Brunskill[1] (18 December 1899 – 18 February 1980) was an English contralto of the mid-twentieth century. Her career included concert, operatic and recital performance from the early 1920s until the 1950s. She worked with many of the leading musicians of her day, including Sir Thomas Beecham, Albert Coates, Felix Weingartner and Sir Henry Wood.
Muriel Brunskill was born in Kendal, Westmorland, England, daughter of Edmund Capstick Brunskill.[2] She studied singing in London and Paris with Blanche Marchesi.[3] Her début was in 1920 at the Aeolian Hall, London. She sang at the Proms in 1921 in Elgar's Sea Pictures, when The Times commented that her singing was intelligent but lacked bite, and her diction was indistinct.[4] By 1923, Brunskill's critical reputation was much higher: The Musical Times said, "She is clearly one of the elect as a Bach singer."[5]
In 1925, Brunskill married the conductor Robert Ainsworth, with whom she had two sons. Ainsworth died in 1947, aged 46.
Peak years
After leaving the BNOC in 1927, Brunskill sang mostly in oratorio and other concert works, appearing regularly at the Three Choirs, Handel, Norwich, and Leeds Festivals, and with the Royal Choral Society, Royal Philharmonic Society, Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Hallé Orchestra.
To celebrate Elgar's 70th birthday in 1927, the BBC broadcast a birthday concert from No 1 Studio, Savoy Hill. Elgar conducted, and Brunskill sang in The Music Makers and Sea Pictures. Overseas, Brunskill sang with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and on a Canadian tour in 1930; at the Cincinnati May Festival in 1931; and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and in New York in 1932. She returned to opera for seasons in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, in 1934–1935 followed by a concert tour in Australia and New Zealand, with her husband.[2]
In December 1928, Brunskill was in Beecham's Queen's Hall RPS presentation of Handel's Hercules with Dora Labbette, Lilian Stiles-Allen, Tudor Davies and Horace Stevens.[8] Brunskill's operatic appearances were fewer in the 1930s, but in 1933 her Amneris at Covent Garden, conducted by John Barbirolli, won warm praise: "Miss Brunskill seemed to rejoice in having the Covent Garden stage as a sounding-board for her magnificent voice, and to find inspiration in the unaccustomed freedom of dramatic music. Her acting was a direct and unexaggerated expression of emotion... she achieved a fine piece of work in the part and her actual singing was superb throughout."[9]
Brunskill sang the role of the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius conducted by Malcolm Sargent on 10 May 1941, the last concert given in the Queen's Hall, which was destroyed by a German incendiary bomb that night in an air raid.[15] In 1942, to mark Arthur Sullivan's centenary week, the BBC broadcast The Golden Legend from the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Wood with soloists including Muriel Brunskill.[16]
Later years
In 1949, Brunskill made her last operatic appearance, as Ortrud in Lohengrin at Covent Garden.[3] In the 1950s, she extended her repertoire, appearing in the musical Golden City by John Toré, which ran at the Adelphi Theatre from June to October 1950,[17] and in the film The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan in 1953.[18] In 1956 and 1957, she appeared in a Gilbert and Sullivan tour in Australia and New Zealand.[2]
Though best known for oratorio and opera, Brunskill was also admired for her song recitals. The Times said, "As a recitalist she excelled in the songs of Schubert, Brahms and those of contemporary English composers. Her voice, even throughout all registers... was capable of many and expressive nuances."[3] In 1954, a Times critic commented that years of opera and oratorio had made her voice less suitable for the recital room.[19] In a 2001 history of London's main recital venue, the Wigmore Hall, the critic Alan Blyth remembered Brunskill's "formidable presence with her handbag plonked on the piano lid."[20]
Brunskill retired to Bishops Tawton, near Barnstaple, Devon, England, where she died at age eighty.
Recordings
In Thomas Beecham's first recording of Messiah, in 1927, Brunskill was one of the soloists, along with Dora Labbette, Harold Williams, Hubert Eisdell, and Nellie Walker. In recordings of the same period, Brunskill was the contralto soloist in Felix Weingartner's recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras. From the early 20th century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of Britain and, according to the BBC, was Britain's first international conductor.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Sir John Barbirolli was a British conductor and cellist. He is remembered above all as conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, which he helped save from dissolution in 1943 and conducted for the rest of his life. Earlier in his career he was Arturo Toscanini's successor as music director of the New York Philharmonic, serving from 1936 to 1943. He was also chief conductor of the Houston Symphony from 1961 to 1967, and was a guest conductor of many other orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, with all of which he made recordings.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is a British orchestra based in London. One of five permanent symphony orchestras in London, the LPO was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras.
Sir Henry Joseph Wood was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were officially renamed in his honour as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", although they continued to be generally referred to as "the Proms".
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works. The musical ensembles with which he was associated included the Ballets Russes, the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Royal Choral Society, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and the London Philharmonic, Hallé, Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. Sargent was held in high esteem by choirs and instrumental soloists, but because of his high standards and a statement that he made in a 1936 interview disputing musicians' rights to tenure, his relationship with orchestral players was often uneasy. Despite this, he was co-founder of the London Philharmonic, was the first conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic as a full-time ensemble, and played an important part in saving the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from disbandment in the 1960s.
Dame Janet Abbott Baker is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.
The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert Newman together with Henry Wood. The hall had drab decor and cramped seating but superb acoustics. It became known as the "musical centre of the [British] Empire", and several of the leading musicians and composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries performed there, including Claude Debussy, Edward Elgar, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss.
Margaret Anne Marshall OBE is a Scottish soprano.
Dame Isobel Baillie,, néeIsabella Douglas Baillie, was a Scottish soprano. She made a local success in Manchester, where she was brought up, and in 1923 made a successful London debut. Her career, encouraged by the conductor Sir Hamilton Harty, quickly developed, with breaks in the first years for vocal study in Milan. Baillie's career was almost wholly as a concert singer: she only once acted in an opera production on stage. She was associated above all with oratorio, becoming well known for her many performances in Handel's Messiah, Haydn's The Creation, Mendelssohn's Elijah and the choral works of Elgar.
Andrew Foster-Williams is an English operatic bass-baritone, concert singer and recitalist.
Mary Jarred was an English opera singer of the mid-twentieth century. She is sometimes classed as a mezzo-soprano and sometimes as a contralto.
Norman Allin CBE was a British bass singer of the early and mid twentieth century, and later a teacher of voice.
Astra Desmond was a British contralto of the early and middle twentieth century.
Louise Kirkby Lunn was an English coloratura contralto. Born into a working-class family in Manchester, She appeared in many French and Italian operas, but was best known as a Wagnerian. In addition to many appearances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, she was seen frequently at the Metropolitan Opera, New York in the early years of the 20th century. She died in London, aged 56.
Frederic William Austin was an English baritone singer, a musical teacher and composer in the period 1905–30. He is perhaps best remembered for his arrangement of Johann Pepusch's music for a 1920 production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, and its sequel Polly in 1922; and for his popularization of the melody of the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. Austin was the older brother of the composer Ernest Austin (1874–1947).
Robert Radford was a British bass singer who made his career entirely in the United Kingdom, participating in concerts and becoming one of the foremost performers of oratorios and other sacred music. He had equally great success in a broad spectrum of operatic roles, ranging from Wagner to Gilbert and Sullivan, due to the strength and burnished beauty of his well-trained voice.
Jean Pougnet was a Mauritian-born concert violinist and orchestra leader, of British nationality, who was highly regarded in both the lighter and more serious classical repertoire during the first half of the twentieth century. He was leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1942 to 1945.
Dora Labbette was an English soprano. Her career spanned the concert hall and the opera house. She conspired with Sir Thomas Beecham to appear at the Royal Opera House masquerading as an Italian singer by the name of Lisa Perli. Away from professional concerns she had an affair with Beecham, with whom she had a son.
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References
Elkin, Robert. Royal Philharmonic, Rider, London, 1946
MacRae, Julia (ed). Wigmore Hall: 1901–2001 – A Celebration. Wigmore Hall Trust, London, 2001. ISBN0-9539581-0-8
Pound, Reginald. Sir Henry Wood, Cassell, London, 1969
Wood, Henry J. My Life of Music, Gollancz, London, 1946
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