Margaret Anne Marshall

Margaret Anne Marshall

Marshall was born in Stirling. Her career started in the 1970s and she has sung a wide range of classical and operatic roles up to her retirement in 2004. She received the James Gulliver Award for Performing Arts in Scotland in 1991, in 1999 she was appoint

ed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours,^[1] and on 23 June 2009 she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the University of St Andrews.^[2]

Biography

Margaret Marshall studied singing at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow with Ena Mitchell, with whom she continued to study after graduating. Awarded a Caird Travelling Acholarship, Marshall travelled to Munich to study with German bass-baritone Hans Hotter, who suggested she enter the ARD International Music Competition in Munich.

Winning first prize in the 1974 ARD Competition, singing Purcell and Bach in the final, launched Marshall's international career that initially focussed on the concert platform. In 1975 she made her recital debut at the

Her first operatic role was Euridice in Gluck's Orfeo which she first sang on the concert platform in the Queen Elizabeth Hall with Sir John Eliot Gardiner before making her stage debut in Florence with Riccardo Muti in 1977, a role she subsequently recorded with Muti and the Philharmonia Orchestra. The Italian conductor invited her back to Florence for his first production Le Nozze di Figaro in 1979, in which she sang the role of the Countess.

On the opera platform, Marshall was best known for her interpretation of Mozartian roles. She sang the Countess in Figaro in many of the world's leading opera houses including the Royal Opera House London, La Scala Milan, Wiener Staatsoper and Deutsche Oper Berlin as well as with Scottish Opera. She made her Salzburg Festival debut in 1982 singing Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte with Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmoniker in Michael Hampe's production that remained in the Festival's repertoire until 1991. She also recorded Fiordiligi with Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic. Other opera houses in which she sang Fiordiligi include the Royal Opera House, Frankfurt Opera, Zurich Opera and Scottish Opera.

Other Mozart roles included Pamina (

External links

• Official website
• Short biography, bach-cantatas.com
• Short biography, Gazetteer for Scotland