Music historian and excavator of neglected Irish opera

Basil Walsh, biographer of composer Michael William Balfe and of singer Catherine Hayes, who has died at the age of 80, was an important researcher, author, lecturer, and broadcaster on the history of opera and classical music in Ireland and of Irish music and opera on the international stage.

Basil Francis Walsh was born in 1934 in Dublin to Laura (née Clowry) and James Stanislaus Walsh. With a passion for classical music passed on to him at an early age by his father, he sang in the chorus of the Dublin Grand Opera Society during many performances throughout the 1950s.

After studying voice at the Guildhall School of Music in London, he emigrated to America in 1960, where he met his wife, Eileen (née Appi).

There he began a career as an advertising and database marketing executive. He spent most of his adult life living in Florida but maintained very strong ties to Ireland.

A thorough, meticulous and energetic researcher, he was a regular contributor of articles to many international journals, including Opera Quarterly, History Ireland, Opera magazine, and various operatic society publications.

Authoritative

He wrote authoritative entries for the Royal Irish Academy’s

Dictionary of Irish Biograph

y, the

Encyclopedia of Ireland and the Americas

and the recent

Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland

.

His biography Catherine Hayes: The Hibernian Prima Donna was the first and definitive biography of the pioneering Irish soprano, born in poverty in Limerick, but who went on to become a global operatic superstar.

Perhaps Walsh’s most important work was his biography, in 2008, of the Dublin-born composer Michael William Balfe (1808-1870). His book details the composer’s extraordinary life in early 19th century Ireland, London, France and Italy and his rise to fame in Britain, Europe and America as the composer of 28 operas and a large number of other works – at one time he was the most-performed composer of opera in the English-speaking world.

Walsh was an active member of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, the Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland, the Irish American Historical Society, and the Donizetti Society in London. A patron of the Limerick Civic Trust Catherine Hayes Restoration and Heritage programme, he was also one of the founding board members of Classical Arts Ireland, where until his sudden passing he was working on a project to establish a national digital archive of classical music and opera, and on the restoration and production of more “lost” Balfe operas.

His many professional contacts, friends and admirers attest to his great personal warmth, sense of humour and generosity. At all times he generously gave of his friendship, scholarship and expertise in the cause of making the richness and significance of Ireland’s opera and classical music heritage far better known.

He was predeceased in 2010 by his wife, Eileen, and is survived by their son, Jay, and by his brother, Derek.