KIRKBY LUNN DEAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 901, 19 February 1930, Page 9

KIRKBY LUNN DEAD

FAMOUS BRITISH CONTRALTO “VOICE OF PURPLE VELVET” LONDON, Tuesday. The death lias occurred of Madame Kirkby Lunn, the well-known contralto prima donna. She was horn in Manchester in November, 1873, and received her first musical instruction from Dr. Greenwood. In 1893 she won a scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London, where she studied under Visetti, and later appeared at Drury Lane in Schumann’s “Genoveva” and Delibes’s “Le Roi l’a DiL” She made her actual debut at the Opera Comique as Nora in Stanford's “Shamus O’Brien.” From 1896 to 1899 Madame Lunn was a member of the Carl Rosa Company. She began to sing at the Queen’s Hall orchestral concerts in 1599. In that year she married Mr W. J. K. Pearson and retired from the stage for two years. In 1901 she made her first appearance at Covent Garden. From 1902 to 1915 she was regularly engaged for the Royal Opera seasons, taking Wagnerian and other roles. In 1902 she was heard for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. - In 1904, on a second visit to America, she sang Kundy in Savage's production of “Parsifal,” this being the first time it was given in English in the United States. She appeared at the Metropolitan Opera and at Budapest for many seasons. Apart from Wagnerian parts her best roles were Dalila, Carmen and Orfeo. From 1912 to 1914 she made a tour of Australia and New Zealand. A critic once said of her that she possessed “a voice of purple velve’ shot with gold.”