Constance Shacklock
Constance Shacklock
Life and career
Shacklock was born in Sherwood, Nottingham, and trained at the
Away from Covent Garden, Shacklock appeared in opera in Berlin with
In 1961, Shacklock left the operatic stage and joined the cast of The Sound of Music for an unexpected six-year run as the Mother Abbess at the Palace Theatre, London.[3] She retired from performing, and taught singing at the Royal Academy of Music from 1968 to 1978.[4] Notable students included the British opera singers Kathryn Harries and Victoria Burmester. Shacklock was awarded the OBE in 1971 and became president of the Association of Teachers of Singing in 1995. While teaching at the Royal Academy of Music she became close friends with a young mezzo-soprano from Birmingham called Jean Tredaway, whom she subsequently adopted. Jean Tredaway, who died in 2006, was born in 1935, the youngest of eight children of Robert H. Tredaway and May Trueman.
Shacklock married organist Eric George Mitchell in 1947 (died 1965). She died in London in 1999. A vast archive of personal documents once belonging to her was discovered in a Midlands property and was auctioned on 18 August 2010 in Lichfield. The eponymous Constance Close in Kingston Vale, Surrey, was created on the site of her residence in her memory.
Notes
- ^ Forbes, Elizabeth. "Shacklock, Constance". The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Oxford Music Online. Retrieved 22 October 2010. (subscription required)
- ^ The Times, 21 September 1953, p. 10; 20 September 1954, p. 9; 17 September 1956, p. 3; 16 September 1957, p. 3; and 19 September 1960, p. 4
- ^ The show closed in January 1967: see The Times, 5 January 1967, p. 4
- ^ "Constance Shacklock". Oxford Dictionary of Music. Oxford Music Online. Retrieved 22 October 2010. (subscription required)
Sources
- "Constance Shacklock, 86, Mezzo-Soprano". The New York Times. 4 July 1999.
- Blyth, Alan (1 July 1999). "Constance Shacklock". The Guardian.
- Forbes, Elizabeth (30 June 1999). "Obituary: Constance Shacklock". The Independent.
- Blyth, Alan (2004). "Shacklock, Constance Bertha (1913–1999)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- "Tribute to Constance Shacklock OBE". World Collectors Net. Archived from the original on 13 June 2011.
- "A Tribute to Constance Shacklock OBE". Richard Winterton Auctioneers. Archived from the original on 10 March 2012.
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