Dame Isobel Baillie, Mrs. Wrigley,DBE (born 9 March 1895, Hawick, Scottish Borders - died 24 September 1983, Manchester) was a Scottish soprano, popular in opera, oratorio and lieder.
She worked in a music shop and as a clerk at Manchester Town Hall, and made her debut with the Hallé Orchestra in 1921. After studies in Milan, she won immediate success in her opening season in London in 1923. Regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest oratorio...
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Dame Isobel Baillie, Mrs. Wrigley,DBE (born 9 March 1895, Hawick, Scottish Borders - died 24 September 1983, Manchester) was a Scottish soprano, popular in opera, oratorio and lieder.
She worked in a music shop and as a clerk at Manchester Town Hall, and made her debut with the Hallé Orchestra in 1921. After studies in Milan, she won immediate success in her opening season in London in 1923. Regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest oratorio singers, her favourite work was Handel's Messiah, of which she gave over 1000 performances during her career. She was often in demand for choral works; apart from the Messiah, she was noted in Joseph Haydn's The Creation, Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah, and Johannes Brahms's A German Requiem. In 1933 she became the first British performer to sing in the Hollywood Bowl in California in 1933. In 1937 Arturo Toscanini chose her to sing Brahms' Requiem.
Her performances of Gluck's Orpheus (always in English, so not Orfeo ed Euridice) and Charles...
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