Muriel Brunskill

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Muriel Brunskill, born Kendal 18 December 1899, was a British contralto of the mid-twentieth century.

Her teachers included Blanche Marchesi. Her professional debut was in 1922.

To celebrate Elgar’s 70th birthday in 1927 the BBC broadcast a birthday concert from No 1 Studio, Savoy Hill. Elgar conducted, and Muriel Brunskill sang in The Music Makers and Sea Pictures.

In Sir Thomas Beecham’s first recording of Messiah, in 1927, Muriel Brunskill was one of the soloists, along with Dora Labbette, Harold Williams, Hubert Eisdell, and Nellie Walker.

In recordings of the same period Brunskill was the contralto soloist in Felix Weingartner’s recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and Marthe in Beecham’s Faust. Also in the Faust cast were Heddle Nash, Robert Easton and Harold Williams who, on 5 October 1938 joined Brunskill among the original 16 singers in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music (as did another Marchesi pupil, Astra Desmond.)

Muriel Brunskill sang in The Dream of Gerontius conducted by Malcolm Sargent on 10 May 1941, the very last concert given in the Queen's Hall, which was destroyed by German aircraft that night.

In 1942 to mark Arthur Sullivan's centenary week the BBC broadcast The Golden Legend from the Albert Hall, conducted by Sir Henry Wood with soloists including Muriel Brunskill.

In 1950 she appeared in and recorded songs from the musical Golden City by John Tore, and in 1953 appeared in the film The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan.

In a 2001 history of the Wigmore Hall (details below) the critic Alan Blyth remembers Muriel Brunskill's 'formidable presence with her handbag plonked on the piano lid.'

She died in February 1980.