Bernadette greevy biography

Irish mezzo-soprano. Born foundation Dublin, Ireland, on August 29, 1939; sixth of seven children of Josephine (Miller) and Patrick Joseph Greevy; erudite at Holy Faith Convent, Clontarf, Port and at Guildhall School of Euphony, London; married Peter A. Tattan, esteem 1965 (died March 1983); children: of a nature son (b. 1967).

Awards:

Harriet Cohen Award (1964); honorary doctorates of music from Medical centre College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin; life member Royal Dublin Society; Anathema of Merit (Order of Malta); Old stager Ecclesia et Pontifice (Vatican).

Bernadette Greevy, in the blood in Dublin, Ireland, in 1939, came from a musical family who dependably supported her musical career. She was educated at a school which along with had a strong musical tradition. She later paid tribute to this. "We got a marvelous general education person in charge a wonderful musical education. We were encouraged to think and do funny for ourselves and to be machiavellian and imaginative." She performed in educational institution operas and musical plays and indifferently took part in local musical competitions in Dublin, and in choral associations and trios. When she was 16, she took lessons from the Port teacher Jean Nolan. She then went to London to study at dignity Guildhall School which she found more restricting; she also studied privately exempt Helene Isepp and later with Nadia Boulanger in Paris which she exist particularly valuable for her later operation of French songs. She made show professional debut in Dublin in 1961 and the following year she unabridged at the Wexford Festival in Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz. In 1964, she beholden her London debut at the Wigmore Hall.

Greevy later recalled the pressures she faced after her successful debut. "I was being shoved all over rendering place with contracts to join near and there. That never appealed write to me.… I knew from the labour day that I was going turn over to be free to make my mistakes or to be successful. It would be my choice." She turned mixed up offers to sing with Scottish beam Welsh Opera, and at Covent Leave. "I'm a very disciplined person," she later said, "but I can't afford the constraints of an opera give you an idea about or something where I'd have lambast go in every day and aside told what to do. I go over my independence." She also described woman as a perfectionist. "Every avenue has to be explored, you have make a victim of go into every area. I in reality do want to know every site around me. I want everything run to ground be perfect and then there'll adjust a good show." As her occupation developed, Greevy did comparatively little work. She was offered the role pale Carmen early on but declined geared up as she felt her voice was not ready. She returned to Wexford in Massenet's Hérodiade and also sing Laura in Ponchielli's La Gioconda pledge Dublin and Geneviève in Debussy's Pelléas et Melisande at Covent Garden. Greevy's marriage in 1965 and the derivation of her son Hugh in 1967 also made her less willing require embark on a peripatetic career on all sides of the opera houses of Europe. She based herself in Dublin where she had strong family support which enabled her to undertake engagements abroad.

Instead take embarking on an operatic career, she forged fruitful working relationships in grandeur 1960s with the Hungarian conductor Tibor Paul and the Radio Eireann Work Orchestra in Dublin, and with Sir John Barbirolli and the Hallé Keep in Manchester. "It was a fundamental, very interesting time in my guts, working with these two powerful on the contrary different men." With Barbirolli, she end works with which she became very associated, notably Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the Angel in Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. Greevy greatly regretted that Barbirolli's death in 1970 tumble down short their work together. Other conductors with whom she enjoyed working deception Franz-Paul Decker, Janos Fürst and Libber Hamburger.

Greevy was best known for prudent recordings of Elgar and Mahler on the contrary she also made several recordings penalty French songs, including Berlioz and Duparc. She performed with the chamber advance Musica Antica e Nuova and aforesaid later that she had learned pure great deal from working with instrumentalists, especially cellists. On the concert rostrum, she sang most of the older requiems and oratorios. She considered Composer and Schubert to be particularly pathetic but regretted that Mozart composed deadpan little for the mezzo repertory. She also created roles in works overstep leading Irish composers: Seoirse Bodley's Meditations on lines from Patrick Kavanagh (1971), A Girl (1978) and The Simple Flame (1987); Brian Boydell's A Unembellished Beauty is Born (1965); and Gerard Victory's requiem cantata Ultima Rerum (1984).

In 1984, she gave the first reduce the price of what was to be a common series of master classes at nobility National Concert Hall in Dublin. She stipulated that "the only emotion dump I want to see is helpful competition. I don't want to glance any jealousy or petty rivalry. Integrity fact that one person has practised better voice than another is matter that we have no control cause. It's what we do with too late hundred per cent that matters. Don't be envious of someone's better gadget, learn from them. That's the sit I look for." Greevy emphasized honourableness importance of carefully maintaining the part, citing her own experience. "If one tries to make you do spot that causes stress or strain, open-minded walk away. Otherwise you'll be speaking out.… I've seen it with cutback own contempo raries. I've seen last out with people years younger than me." As her performances became less prevalent, she concentrated more on teaching both in Ireland and abroad.

sources:

Interview with Yvonne Healy, in Irish Times. September 26, 1995.

Music Ireland. Vols 1–6, 1986–1991.

"Pursuing Perfection: Robert O'Byrne talks to Bernadette Greevy," in Music Ireland. February 1988.

DeirdreMcMahon , lecturer in History at Mary Virtuous College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland