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Bless This House (song)
"Bless This House" is a song published in 1927. The words were written by Englishwoman Helen Taylor, under the original title "Bless the House". The music was composed by Australian May Brahe, a friend of Taylor's. One of the first artists to record the song was tenor John McCormack who recorded it on September 16, 1932 in London with Edwin Schneider on piano. In the United States, this song is strongly associated with Thanksgiving and is often sung around this time. It is frequently found in spiritual/inspirational collections, such as the Doris Day album ''You'll Never Walk Alone'' and the Perry Como album ''I Believe'', as well as in many Hymnals. It was a favourite of Vera Lynn, British WW2 "Forces Sweetheart" and appears on her album ''Favourite Sacred Songs'' (1972). Australian duo Generation Gap (Australian tenor Jim Hopkin and pianist Stephen Lightbody) also recorded a version of the song which appears on their 2009 album ''A New Beginning''. Other singers to record it in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
May Brahe
Mary Hannah (May) Brahe (née Dickson) (6 November 188414 August 1956) was an Australian composer, best known for her songs and ballads. Her most famous song by far is " Bless This House", recorded by John McCormack, Beniamino Gigli, Lesley Garrett and Bryn Terfel. According to Move.com.au: "She was the only Australian woman composer to win local an international recognition before World War II," having "290 of her 500 songs published. Of these, 248 were written under her own name, the remainder under aliases. Biography Mary Hannah Dickson was born in East Melbourne in 1884. She was known as May from an early age. Her father was native born and her mother Scottish. She studied piano with her mother, then at Stratherne Girls' School, Hawthorn, and later with Mona McBurney and the singer Alice Rebotarro. In 1903 she married Frederick Brahe, the couple had two sons and a daughter. By 1910 she was playing in a trio with George W. L. Marshall-Hall, and accompanying singers. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beniamino Gigli
Beniamino Gigli ( , ; 20 March 1890 – 30 November 1957) was an Italian opera singer (lyric tenor). He is widely regarded as one of the greatest tenors of his generation. Early life Gigli was born in Recanati, in the Marche, the son of a shoemaker who loved opera. His parents did not, however, view music as a secure career. Benjamino's brother Lorenzo became a well-known painter. Career In 1914, he won first prize in an international singing competition in Parma. His operatic debut came on 15 October 1914, when he played Enzo in Amilcare Ponchielli's '' La Gioconda'' in Rovigo, following which he was in great demand. Gigli made many important debuts in quick succession, and always in ''Mefistofele'': Teatro Massimo in Palermo (31 March 1915), Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (26 December 1915), Teatro Costanzi di Roma (26 December 1916), La Scala, Milan (19 November 1918), Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires (28 June 1919) and finally the Metropolitan Opera, New York City (26 November ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bryn Terfel
Sir Bryn Terfel Jones, (; born 9 November 1965) (known professionally as Bryn Terfel) is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly '' Figaro'', ''Leporello'' and ''Don Giovanni'', but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Puccini and Wagner. Biography Bryn Terfel Jones was born in Pant Glas, Caernarfonshire, Wales, the son of a farmer. His first language is Welsh. To avoid confusion with another Welsh baritone, Delme Bryn-Jones, he chose Bryn Terfel as his professional name. He had an interest in and talent for music from a very young age. A family friend taught him how to sing, starting with traditional Welsh songs. After winning numerous competitions for his singing, he moved to London in 1984 and entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied under Rudolf Piernay. In 1988 he entered and won the Morriston Orpheus Choir Supporters' Associati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lesley Garrett
Lesley Garrett, Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 10 April 1955) is an English soprano singer, musician, broadcaster and media personality. She is noted for being at home in opera and "crossover music". Early life Garrett was born in the town of Thorne, South Yorkshire, Thorne, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire , into a musical family. She attended Thorne Fieldside Infant and Junior Schools and Thorne Grammar School. As she grew up she inherited her family's love of music. Her grandfather Colin Wall was a classical pianist; her father Derek worked as a railway signalman and then as a schoolteacher at Hatfield Woodhouse Primary School, eventually going on to become a headmaster. They lived nearby just south of the village; her mother Margaret (née Wall) was a talented singing seamstress and became the school secretary at Lesley's primary school. She has two sisters, Jill and Kay, one step-sister, Louise, and two step-brothers named Robert and Nicholas. While a student at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosemary Clooney
Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 – June 29, 2002) was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the song "Come On-a My House", which was followed by other pop numbers such as " Botch-a-Me", " Mambo Italiano", "Tenderly", "Half as Much", "Hey There", "This Ole House", and " Sway". She also had success as a jazz vocalist. Clooney's career languished in the 1960s, partly because of problems related to depression and drug addiction, but revived in 1977, when her '' White Christmas'' co-star Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business. She continued recording until her death in 2002. Early life Rosemary Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky, the daughter of Marie Frances (née Guilfoyle) and Andrew Joseph Clooney. She was one of five children. Her father was of Irish and German descent, and her mother was of English and Irish ancestry. She was raised Catholic. When Clooney was 15, her mother a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Secombe
Sir Harold Donald Secombe (8 September 1921 – 11 April 2001) was a Welsh comedian, actor, singer and television presenter. Secombe was a member of the British radio comedy programme ''The Goon Show'' (1951–1960), playing many characters, most notably Neddie Seagoon. An accomplished tenor, he also appeared in musicals and films – notably as Bumble in '' Oliver!'' (1968) – and, in his later years, was a presenter of television shows incorporating hymns and other devotional songs. Early life Secombe was born in St Thomas, Swansea, the third of four children of Nellie Jane Gladys (née Davies), a shop manageress, and Frederick Ernest Secombe, a commercial traveller and office worker for a Swansea wholesale grocery business. From the age of 11 he attended Dynevor School, a state grammar school in central Swansea. His family were regular churchgoers, belonging to the congregation of St Thomas Church. A member of the choir, from the age of 12 Secombe would perform a sketc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Conway (singer)
Steve Conway (born Walter James Groom; 24 October 1920 – 19 April 1952) was a British singer who rose to fame in the post-war era. Known for romantic ballads, he made dozens of recordings for EMI's Columbia label, appeared regularly on BBC Radio and toured the UK, before his career was interrupted by his untimely death at the age of 31 from a heart condition. He has been described as "Britain's first post-war male heart-throb, a masculine equivalent of Vera Lynn in his sincerity and clear diction." Early life Conway was born in Bethnal Green, then part of the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney in east London, in 1920, and named Walter James Groom; he was known as Jimmy to friends and relatives. The eldest son of five children born to a labourer, Groom's family were poor, and their annual holiday was going hop picking in Kent every summer. The family experienced loss whilst Groom was still young: his twin brothers did not survive infancy, while his sister died at the age of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leontyne Price
Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano who was the first African Americans, African American soprano to receive international acclaim. From 1961 she began a long association with the Metropolitan Opera, where she was the first African American to be a Prima donna, leading performer. She regularly appeared at the world's major opera houses, the Royal Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and La Scala, the last at which she was also the first African American to sing a leading role. She was particularly renowned for her performances of the title role in Verdi's ''Aida''. Born in Laurel, Mississippi, Price attended Central State University and then Juilliard, where she had her operatic debut as Mistress Ford in Verdi's ''Falstaff (opera), Falstaff''. Having heard the performance, Virgil Thomson engaged her in ''Four Saints in Three Acts'' and she then toured—starring alongside her husband William Warfield—in a successful rev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Luxon
Benjamin Matthew Luxon (born 24 March 1937, Redruth, Cornwall) is a retired British baritone. Biography He studied with Walther Gruner at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (while working part-time as a PE teacher in the East End) and established an international reputation as a singer at the age of 21 when he won the third prize at the 1961 ARD International Music Competition in Munich. Soon afterward he joined composer Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group. On their tour of the Soviet Union in 1963, he sang the roles of Sid and Tarquinius in Britten's operas ''Albert Herring'' and ''The Rape of Lucretia'', respectively. In 1971, Britten composed the title role of his television opera ''Owen Wingrave'' specifically for Luxon's voice; Luxon created the role later that year with the English Opera Group. The following year, 1972, Luxon made his début at both the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden – creating the role of the Jester in Peter Maxwell Davies' opera '' Tav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josef Locke
Joseph McLaughlin (23 March 1917 – 15 October 1999), known professionally as Josef Locke, was an Irish tenor. He was successful in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. Background Born in Derry, Ireland, he was the son of a butcher and cattle dealer, and one of nine children. He started singing in local churches in the Bogside at the age of seven, and as a teenager added two years to his age to enlist in the Irish Guards, later serving abroad with the Palestine Police Force, before returning in the late 1930s to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Career Known as ''The Singing Bobby'', he became a local celebrity before starting to work the UK variety circuit, where he also played summer seasons in English seaside resorts. The renowned Irish tenor John McCormack advised him that his voice was better suited to a lighter repertoire than the operatic one he had in mind, and urged him to find an agent—thus he found the noted impresario Jack Hylton who booked ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Peerce
Jan Peerce (born Yehoshua Pinkhes Perelmuth; June 3, 1904 December 15, 1984) was an American operatic tenor. Peerce was an accomplished performer on the operatic and Broadway theatre, Broadway concert stages, in solo recitals, and as a recording artist. He is the father of film director Larry Peerce. Family life Jan Peerce was born Jacob Pincus Perelmuth (though his Hebrew gravestone gives his first name as יהושע, or Joshua, not Jacob), to a American Jews, Jewish family. His parents, Louis and Henya Perelmuth, came from the village of :be:Вёска Гарадзец, Кобрынскі раён, Horodetz, formerly in Poland, now Belarus.Biographical sketcnarrated by Jan's friend Isaac Stern/ref> Their first child, a daughter, died in an epidemic. In 1903 they emigrated to America along with their second child, a boy named Mottel. A year later, on June 3, 1904, their third child, Jacob Pincus, was born in a cold water flat in the Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York (state ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John McCormack (tenor)
Papal Count John Francis McCormack, KSG, KSS, KHS (14 June 1884 – 16 September 1945), was an Irish tenor celebrated for his performances of the operatic and popular song repertoires, and renowned for his diction and breath control. He was also a Papal Count. He became a naturalised American citizen before returning to live in Ireland. Personal life John Francis McCormack was born on 14 June 1884 in Athlone, County Westmeath, Ireland, the second son and fifth of the 11 children (five of whom died in infancy or childhood) of Andrew McCormack and his wife Hannah Watson. His parents were both from Galashiels, Scotland and worked at the Athlone Woollen Mills, where his father was a foreman. He was baptised in St Mary's Church, Athlone, on 23 June 1884. McCormack received his early education from the Marist Brothers in Athlone and later attended Summerhill College, Sligo. He sang in the choir of the old St Peters church in Athlone under his choirmaster Michael Kilkelly. Whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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