22 Facts About Isobel Baillie

Isobel Baillie made a local success in Manchester, where she was brought up, and in 1923 made a successful London debut.

Isobel Baillie's career, encouraged by the conductor Sir Hamilton Harty, quickly developed, with breaks in the first years for vocal study in Milan.

Isobel Baillie was associated above all with oratorio, becoming well known for her many performances in Handel's Messiah, Haydn's The Creation, Mendelssohn's Elijah and the choral works of Elgar.

Isobel Baillie took part in 19 annual Three Choirs Festivals from 1929.

Isobel Baillie made her American debut in 1933 and between then and her retirement from the concert platform in the mid 1950s she sang in the US, New Zealand, the Far East and Africa as well as in Europe.

Isobel Baillie was born in Hawick, Roxburghshire, on 9 March 1895, the youngest child and third daughter of Martin Pott Isobel Baillie, a baker, and his wife, Isabella Hetherington nee Douglas.

Isobel Baillie was christened Isabella Douglas but was known to family and friends as Bella.

Isobel Baillie attended a board school, where her singing was encouraged, and then won a scholarship to Manchester High School, where music was not a high priority.

At fifteen, Isobel Baillie left school, working first in a music shop and then in Manchester Town Hall.

Isobel Baillie made her American debut in 1933 at the Hollywood Bowl with Harty conducting; among the numbers she sang were "With verdure clad" from The Creation, an aria from Carmen and "Dove sono" from The Marriage of Figaro.

In Britain, Isobel Baillie sang for the leading conductors of the 1930s, including Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Adrian Boult and Malcolm Sargent, and visitors from overseas, including Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter and Victor de Sabata.

Isobel Baillie had been a pioneer broadcaster, singing on a local Manchester radio station in 1920, before the foundation of the BBC, and in 1938 she took part in an early television broadcast in a BBC adaptation of Tristan und Isolde.

Isobel Baillie frequently sang excerpts from Wagner and other operas in concert and studio performance, but rarely appeared in the opera house.

Isobel Baillie did so at Covent Garden in 1937 for Orphee et Eurydice, but even then she was not seen, but provided the offstage voice of "L'ombre heureuse".

Isobel Baillie sang at nineteen Three Choirs Festivals, beginning in 1929 at Worcester Cathedral, in Messiah, conducted by Sir Ivor Atkins.

Isobel Baillie sang in Elgar's The Apostles and The Kingdom under the baton of the composer.

Isobel Baillie sang in Honolulu in 1948, and Washington National Cathedral the following year; in 1953 she made a tour of southern Africa, giving recitals in cities including Nairobi, Salisbury, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Isobel Baillie embarked on a new career as a teacher at the Royal College of Music in London, from 1952 to 1957 and again from 1961 to 1964, in between which she was visiting professor of singing at Cornell University.

Isobel Baillie's first recording was a test disc made in February 1924; her first commercial release came the following year; her last major recording was in 1953 in A Sea Symphony, in Decca's Vaughan Williams symphony cycle under Boult; and in 1974 she recorded a song by Harty, released to mark her eightieth birthday.

Isobel Baillie was soprano soloist in complete recordings of Beethoven's Missa solemnis and Messiah and Elijah In 2004 there was released for the first time a live recording, made in the Queen's Hall in 1937, of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony conducted by Toscanini with Isobel Baillie as soprano soloist.

Isobel Baillie was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1951 and promoted to Dame Commander in 1978.

Isobel Baillie was the recipient of honorary degrees from the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Manchester.