Louise Kirkby Lunn

Louise Kirkby Lunn (8 November 1873 – 17 February 1930) was an English contralto (sometimes classified as a mezzo-soprano). Born into a working-class family in Manchester, she became a leading singer in the first two decades of the 20th century, known for her performances in concert, oratorio and opera. 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.
Life and career.
Early years.
Kirkby Lunn was born Louisa Baker in Manchester on 8 November 1872, the daughter of William Henry Baker (1839–1893) an iron moulder, and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, "née" Kirkby (1839–1922), a confectioner. She was trained as a dressmaker, but took singing lessons with the choirmaster of her local church, and in 1890 she obtained a place at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London and studied for three years with Albert Visetti. She adopted her stage name at that time. Winning a scholarship in her second year, she took a leading role in Schumann's "Genoveva" in an RCM student production under Charles Villiers Stanford at Drury Lane in December 1893. The leading theatrical newspaper "The Era" commented:
The following year, also under the baton of Stanford and the direction of Richard Temple, she played the Marquise de Montcontour in Delibes' "Le roi l'a dit" at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. During her time at the RCM she also studied for some time with Jacques Bouhy in Paris.
Early career.
In 1895 Kirkby Lunn appeared in the first season of promenade concerts for Henry Wood, singing songs by J. L. Hatton and Arthur Sullivan. In March 1896 she made her professional operatic début as Nora in Stanford's "Shamus O'Brien" at the Opera Comique, London, again under Wood, a production that ran for 100 nights.
Augustus Harris, who ran the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, gave her a five-year contract in 1896, and she made her début there in June as one of the Valkyries in Wagner's "Die Walküre" (sung in French). The contract lapsed with Harris's sudden death soon after her début, and she joined the Carl Rosa Opera Company, as principal mezzo-soprano in London and on tour. With that company over the next four years her leading roles included Carmen, Siebel in "Faust", Azucena in "Il trovatore", Ortrud in Lohengrin, Brangäne in "Tristan und Isolde", Magdalena in "Die Meistersinger" and Fricka in "Die Walküre". She remained with the Carl Rosa company until 1899. In July of that year she married William John Kirkby Pearson (1871–1946), a second cousin, whom she had known since their childhood. Their son, Louis Kirkby Lunn Pearson, was born in 1900.
Kirkby Lunn continued to be active in concerts as well as opera. In the 1900–1901 Queen's Hall season she sang for Wood in concerts ranging from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to Gilbert and Sullivan excerpts. The following year she sang in a series of Wagner concerts and a performance of Sullivan's cantata "The Golden Legend" to mark the first anniversary of the composer's death.
Opera.
In the first decade of the 20th century Kirkby Lunn established herself as a leading operatic singer, both in London and in New York. In May 1902, as a last-minute substitute for Olive Fremstad, she played Ortrud in a performance of "Lohengrin" before a distinguished audience headed by the King and Queen. Within a week she was appearing with another new Covent Garden star, described by "The Times" as "M. Caruso, a distinguished tenor from Monte Carlo", in "Rigoletto" and "Aida". In the German repertory she played Brangäne to the Isolde of Lillian Nordica. In "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Tully Potter writes:
Kirkby Lunn's first Covent Garden Carmen was in 1906, with Giovanni Zenatello as José and Suzanne Adams as Micaëla. She appeared in "Ring" cycles conducted by Hans Richter (1906 and 1908) and Arthur Nikisch (1907). Potter writes that perhaps her greatest triumph was as Dalila in the first staged performance in Britain of Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila", in April 1909 with the composer in the audience; "The Times" considered her greatest achievement at Covent Garden was in "Aida":
At Covent Garden her other roles included Pallas in Saint-Saëns's "Hélène", Hérodiade in Massenet's "Hérodiade" (staged in this production under the title "Salome"), La Haine in Gluck's "Armide", Olga in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin", and Orfeo in Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice". 
From 1902 Kirkby Lunn appeared frequently in the US. She made her début at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Ortrud in December of that year, and appeared with the company there more than fifty times over the next six years. She sang in "Aida" with Caruso and Emmy Destinn on several occasions, but was mainly heard in Wagnerian roles. In 1908 she sang in the "Ring" under Gustav Mahler. Elsewhere in the US, she toured as Kundry in "Parsifal" in 1904–05 and in recitals in 1910, 1911 and 1925. "The Times" speculated that her appearance in the first American performances of "Parsifal" – unauthorised by the Wagner family – may have been the reason why she was never invited to sing at Bayreuth despite being "among the greatest exponents of the Wagnerian drama".
Kirkby Lunn's only operatic appearances in continental Europe were guest performances in 1906 at the Hungarian Royal Opera House, Budapest, playing Orfeo, Dalila and Carmen. Her last appearances in an international opera season were eight performances in "Aida" with Destinn at Covent Garden in 1919. In 1919–22 she appeared there with the British National Opera Company; her final performances were as Kundry.
Concerts.
Alongside her operatic appearances Kirkby Lunn maintained a concert and recital career. In March 1904 she was a principal soloist in the Elgar Festival concerts given at Covent Garden, appearing on the first night with John Coates and David Ffrangcon-Davies in "The Dream of Gerontius", and on the second with them and with Agnes Nicholls, Kennerley Rumford and Andrew Black in "The Apostles". In 1909 she sang "Sea Pictures" under Elgar's baton at the Royal Philharmonic Society concerts. On that occasion she was awarded the gold medal of the society, for her "rare combination of personal artistic achievement added to a richly endowed nature". She made several further appearances for the society between 1913 and 1916.
Kirkby Lunn toured Australasia In 1912–13 and she appeared at the major British festivals and London recital venues; Potter singles out the Bechstein Hall (from 1917 the Wigmore Hall), which was under the management of her husband. She gave recitals there from 1902 to 1925. Her last major London appearance was at the Albert Hall in a Royal Choral Society performance of Handel's "Messiah" in April 1927, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.
Death and reputation.
After a five-month illness, Kirkby Lunn died of cancer at her home in St John’s Wood, London, on 17 February 1930, aged 56.
The obituarist in "The Manchester Guardian" commented that nobody else could do justice to the part of Kundry "both musically and histrionically, as she did with her ripe experience". The same writer said that Kirkby Lunn's voice had "a rich and luscious quality that was evenly developed throughout its wide range, which never let either her low contralto notes or her upper mezzo register appear in the least forced or manufactured". She was, the writer added, an accomplished linguist, who sang Italian, French and German as readily and idiomatically as English. "The Times" commented that her technique ensured that despite the demands placed on her voice, it was still in fine condition in her last years. The critic Herman Klein wrote of her voice as having "warm, rich notes of true contralto quality". Potter writes that Kirkby Lunn had "a warm, ample voice ranging from low G to high B flat", encompassing both contralto and mezzo-soprano roles. He adds that her technique was better balanced than that of her celebrated contemporary Clara Butt, and "in an age of many fine contraltos she easily held her own".
Recordings.
In 1912 Kirkby Lunn recorded two duets with John McCormack, from operas by Wolf-Ferrari. These duets have been remastered and reissued on CD, as have some of her other, solo, 78-rpm discs. Her main body of her recordings were made for the Gramophone Company between 1909 and 1916 but there were also Pathé records cut earlier, including duets that feature Ben Davies. Among the operatic excerpts in her recorded output is music by Wagner, Verdi, Ponchielli, Gluck and Mozart. The acoustic recording process of the day was not always kind to Kirkby-Lunn's voice although it is better caught in some pieces such as the Gounod "Entreat me not to leave thee", or the Arthur Goring Thomas "A Summer night". '"Che faro?" from "Orfeo" was committed to disc in about 1915. The partnership with Destinn is preserved on record, in a 1911-recorded "Ebben qual nuovo fremito" from "Aida", and a 1911 "L'amo come il fulgor", from Ponchielli's "La Gioconda". In 1917 Edward German's Kipling setting "Have you news of my boy Jack?" gave Kirkby Lunn "a wartime hit on disc".