January, 1926, Sunday 31

Memorable day of big concert in Opera House. Programme consists of ‘Hail, Bright Abode’, ‘Fly, Singing Bird, Fly’ and ‘The Walpurgis Night’. Peter Dawson1 also sings two groups of songs. After Mass, Pappy and I go to meet Dawson in the Imperial Hotel, and then go to general practice. Very nervous before performance. Concert great success. House packed. Choir sings splendidly, and Dawson proves to be a fine artist. I accompany on harmonium, and evidently get on pretty well. Miss O’Brien2 is at piano for choir, and Mr. Carlton Fay, a typically dry Australian, plays for Dawson. The only painful event was that the curtain could not be dropped in time as the man was at the time smoking his pipe in some other part of the house. Everything splendid afterwards until it was found out that three of the soloists were departing from the choir, because they were not brought to the footlights. Shows their mentality!

  1. Peter Dawson (1882-1961) was a celebrated Australian baritone who lived in London. [↩]
  2. Jane (Jennie) O’Brien, or Sinéad Ní Bhríain (1895-1979), daughter of Cork wool millers, had been a talented pupil of Tilly Fleischmann’s who gave recitals and broadcasts. She was one of the Fleischmanns’ best friends. In the 1920s she trained in Manchester as a nursery nurse, graduating from the Princess Christian College there. She was later to study music in University College Cork under Aloys Fleischmann, graduating in 1943. She then taught in Drishane, and in Scoil Íte, the school founded by Terence MacSwiney’s sisters in 1916, having all her life been a close family friend of theirs. [↩]