Dame Isobel Baillie, (9 March 189524 September 1983), née Isabella Douglas Baillie, was a Scottish soprano. She made a local success in Manchester, where she was brought up, and in 1923 made a successful London debut. Her career, encouraged by the conductor Sir Hamilton Harty, quickly developed, with breaks in the first years for vocal study in Milan. Baillie's career was almost wholly as a concert singer: she only once acted in an opera production on stage. She 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.
During a long career, Baillie sang in complete recordings of Messiah, Elijah, Beethoven's Missa solemnis and Ninth Symphony. In the 1940s she formed a friendship with the contralto Kathleen Ferrier, with whom she appeared frequently in concert and made several recordings of duets. She took part in 19 annual Three Choirs Festivals from 1929. She 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.
In her later years, Baillie was a teacher in the Royal College of Music, Royal Manchester School of Music and Cornell University.
Life and career
Early years
Baillie was born in Hawick, Roxburghshire, on 9 March 1895, the youngest child and third daughter of Martin Pott Baillie (1860–1904), a baker, and his wife, Isabella Hetherington née Douglas (1865–1936). She was christened Isabella Douglas but was known to family and friends as Bella. While she was a young girl the family moved to Newcastle upon Tyne and then to Manchester. She 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, Baillie left school, working first in a music shop and then in Manchester Town Hall. She took singing lessons from Jean Sadler-Fogg, a former pupil of Blanche Marchesi. In her spare time she sang at local concerts, at one of which in about 1913 she met Henry (Harry) Leonard Wrigley (1891–1957), a cotton trader. They married on 31 December 1917 while he was on sick leave from the armed forces in France. Their only child, a daughter, Nancy, was born in December 1918. By this time Baillie was earning more from concert fees than from her work at the town hall and she became a full-time professional. In 1921 Hamilton Harty, conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, engaged her for several concerts, including performances of Haydn's The Creation and Handel's Messiah.
Leading soloist, 1923–1940
Baillie made her London debut in 1923. Sir Henry Wood engaged her for six concerts at the Queen's Hall. Her career quickly developed, but on Harty's advice she took a break from concert-giving in mid-1925 and another the following year to study in Milan with the vocal coach at La Scala, Gugliemo Somma. Harty further helped her in her career by suggesting a change of professional name from "Bella Baillie" ("he felt that it led one to expect a music hall or musical comedy artist") On 6 May 1929 she placed a notice in The Times stating that from that date Miss Bella Baillie would sing under the name of Isobel Baillie.
As The Times obituarist put it, for thirty years after her London debut "she was in constant demand on the concert platform, making a speciality of Messiah, The Creation, Elijah, and the choral work of Elgar". She 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. The Los Angeles Times said of the last, "For style and sheer loveliness of sound [it] was the finest thing that has been heard in the Bowl for a long, long time". In Britain, 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.
Among the concert highlights of Baillie's career in the 1930s was the premiere of Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra, composed in 1938 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Wood's first concert. The soloists were eminent singers from Britain and the Commonwealth; the opening and closing lines were sung by Baillie. Ten days after the concert Wood and his 16 singers recorded the work for Columbia, "thereby", in the words of Michael Kennedy, "preserving her marvellous ascent to top A on the words 'sweet harmony'". The recording has been reissued in digital form.