RITA SHAW:RITA LYNCH, the internationally acclaimed Irish singer, who has died at the age of 95, was known at the height of her fame as the "golden voiced soprano".
Though her married name was Shaw, she performed under her maiden name, winning accolades both in competition and public performance, making records, singing to full houses in Chicago, Boston and New York and performing with the Dublin Grand Opera Society.
Born in Macroom, Co Cork, into a family rich in musical talent, her singing career spanned two decades between 1935 and 1955 and she toured extensively.
Recalling her stature as a singer, she was invited in 1997 to attend the 250th commemoration at the National Concert Hall in Dublin of the first performance of Handel’s Messiah in Fishamble Street. Half a century earlier, Rita had sung the soprano lead in the 1942 bi-centennial performance in Dublin.
Educated at the Mercy Convent in Macroom and the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock, Cork, her early talent was nurtured under the watchful eyes of the nuns and on leaving school in 1933, she began to make her mark, sweeping the boards by winning junior and senior medals and cups both at the Father Maitiu Feis in Cork and at the Dublin Feis Ceoil where the adjudicator described her as a singer “whose breath control was well nigh perfect”.
In 1939, Rita moved to Dublin to study under Jean Nolan, winning the Count John McCormack Competition in the same year. In the final, broadcast live on radio to a record-breaking audience, she sang Thomas Moore’s The Last Rose of Summer, the song with which she was afterwards associated.
In the Spring of 1940, she won critical acclaim for her operatic debut in LElisir dAmore and the following year went on to win the Feis Ceoil’s most coveted trophy, the Lieder Prize.
As her career flourished, she travelled the length and breadth of Ireland and Britain, topping the bill in Dublin, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Glasgow. Her live radio broadcasts included a co-presented programme on record collecting, gramophone circles and her life in singing, aired from the historic 2RN studio at the Women’s Gaol in the leafy Cork suburb of Shanakiel. Recordings of her singing are contained in Cork City Library’s music archive.
The bicentennial performance of Handel's Messiah and the centenary performance of Balfe's The Bohemian Girl, both at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, were among her leading roles in Ireland.
In 1948 she recorded three 78 records at the HMV studios, London, including Mozart's Lullaby, The Spinning Wheel, The Fairy Tales of Ireland, Home Sweet Home, I Will Walk With My Loveand The Last Rose of Summer.
In the course of a three month US concert tour in 1949, she sang in Boston, Chicago and New York, guesting with Sir Arthur Fiedler at a sell-out performance of the Boston Pops.
Besides raising her family of four, Rita continued her singing into the 1950s, sharing the stage with the famous Scottish tenor Fr Sidney MacEwan at Macroom’s Palace Cinema in 1955.
She was president of both the Old Ursulines Past Pupils’ Union and the Soroptimists in Cork, pursued a successful career as a singing teacher during the 1970’s and expressed her artistic talents through oil painting in the 1980s and 1990s.
Her last public performance was at the Fianna Fáil golden jubilee celebration “Grand Celebrity Concert” in Cork City Hall on October 23rd, 1976. The programme, introduced by former taoiseach and party leader Jack Lynch, included Niall Tobin and Frank Patterson and the address was by Lord Longford.
In 1995, Rita received the Margaret Burke Sheridan Medal of the Vocal Heritage Society of Ireland, marking her contribution to singing in Ireland .
She passed away at her home on Model Farm Road, Cork, and was pre-deceased by her Husband Patrick J Shaw and son Harry and is survived by her daughters Mary, Marita, and Salette.
Rita Shaw (nee Lynch): Born December 2nd, 1914; died January 16th 2009.