Muriel Lucy Brunskill (18 December 1899 – 18 February 1980) was an English contralto of the mid-twentieth century. Her career included concert, operatic and recital performance from the early 1920s until the 1950s. She worked with many of the leading musicians of her day, including Sir Thomas Beecham, Albert Coates, Felix Weingartner and Sir Henry Wood.
Early years
Muriel Brunskill was born in Kendal, Westmorland, England, daughter of Edmund Capstick Brunskill. She studied singing in London and Paris with Blanche Marchesi.<ref name=times>The Times obituary, 21 February 1980, p. 16</ref> Her début was in 1920 at the Aeolian Hall, London. She sang at the Proms in 1921 in Elgar's Sea Pictures, when The Times commented that her singing was intelligent but lacked bite, and her diction was indistinct. By 1923 Brunskill's critical reputation was much higher: The Musical Times said, "She is clearly one of the elect as a Bach singer."
In 1922, Brunskill was recruited by the British National Opera Company where her roles included Amneris in Aida, Delilah in Samson and Delilah, Erda in the Ring and Emilia in OtelloThe Times, 25 April 1925, p. 10 She remained with the company for six years, performing at Covent Garden, His Majesty's Theatre and on tour.
Her appearances for the Royal Philharmonic Society began in October 1925 at the Queen's Hall in a choral programme including Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under Albert Coates, with Dorothy Silk, Walter Widdop and Robert Radford. In March 1927 she performed the Missa Solemnis in the RPS Beethoven memorial concert at the Royal Albert Hall, under Sir Hugh Allen, with Rosina Buckman, Parry Jones and Norman Allin.
In 1925 Brunskill married the conductor Robert Ainsworth, with whom she had two sons. Ainsworth died in 1947, aged 46.
Peak years
After leaving the BNOC in 1927, Brunskill sang mostly in oratorio and other concert works, appearing regularly at the Three Choirs, Handel, Norwich, and Leeds Festivals, and with the Royal Choral Society, Royal Philharmonic Society, Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Hallé Orchestra.
To celebrate Elgar's 70th birthday in 1927, the BBC broadcast a birthday concert from No 1 Studio, Savoy Hill. Elgar conducted, and Brunskill sang in The Music Makers and Sea Pictures. Overseas, Brunskill sang with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and on a Canadian tour in 1930; at the Cincinnati May Festival in 1931; and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and in New York in 1932. She returned to opera for seasons in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, in 1934–1935 followed by a concert tour in Australia and New Zealand, with her husband.
In December 1928 Brunskill was in Beecham's Queen's Hall RPS presentation of Handel's Hercules with Dora Labbette, Lilian Stiles-Allen, Tudor Davies and Horace Stevens. Brunskill's operatic appearances were fewer in the 1930s, but in 1933 her Amneris at Covent Garden, conducted by John Barbirolli, won warm praise: "Miss Brunskill seemed to rejoice in having the Covent Garden stage as a sounding-board for her magnificent voice, and to find inspiration in the unaccustomed freedom of dramatic music. Her acting was a direct and unexaggerated expression of emotion... she achieved a fine piece of work in the part and her actual singing was superb throughout."
In 1936, Brunskill appeared as Kundry alongside Herbert Heyner, Norman Walker and Victor Harding in a presentation of Parsifal for the BBC under Sir Henry Wood. In 1938 she appeared in the English première of Paul Hindemith's Mathis der MalerOn 5 October 1938, in celebration of Sir Henry Wood's golden jubilee as a conductor, Brunskill sang in the first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music along with fifteen other leading English singers including another Marchesi pupil, Astra Desmond. In the same year Brunskill sang under Wood in a rare performance of Gustav Mahler's 8th Symphony (Symphony of a Thousand). Early in Wood's autumn 1940 season at Queen's Hall, Brunskill sang Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, ("jolly well", according to Wood).
Brunskill sang the role of the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius conducted by Malcolm Sargent on 10 May 1941, the last concert given in the Queen's Hall, which was destroyed by a German incendiary bomb that night in an air raid. In 1942, to mark Arthur Sullivan's centenary week, the BBC broadcast The Golden Legend from the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Wood with soloists including Muriel Brunskill.