Ann Murray, DBE, is an Irish mezzo-soprano. She was born on 27 August 1949, in Dublin. She studied with Frederic Cox at the Royal Manchester College of Music and made her stage debut as Alcestis in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Alceste in 1974. She has since sung at all major opera houses and is particularly noted for her performances in works by George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss.
Murray performs mainly at Covent Garden (where she performed as Siphare in Mitridate Rè di Ponto), the English National Opera and the Bavarian State Opera (where she was made Kammersängerin in 1998). Murray was the featured singer in volume three of the Hyperion Schubert Edition, Hyperion Records' complete Franz Schubert lieder project, in 1988, led by pianist Graham Johnson.
In 2002, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to music. Not being a citizen of a Commonwealth realm, the award was honorary rather than substantive. This means she can use the postnominal "DBE", but can't use as Dame Ann Murray.
Murray maintains her links with Ireland and is the Patron of the 'Young Associate Artists Programme' of the Dublin-based Opera Theatre Company. She was married to the late English tenor, Philip Langridge and has one son, Jonathan.
In September 2010 she was appointed professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Famous quotes containing the words ann and/or murray:
“... by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this—that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Strung out and spotty, you wriggle and sigh
and kiss all the fellows and make them all die.”
—Les Murray (b. 1938)