BASIL WALSH – Published Author & Writer of 19th Century Opera Biographies & Performance History
__________________
Basil Walsh was born in Dublin, Ireland and has spent most of his life in Florida. He is a retired advertising & marketing executive who lives in Palm Beach County, Florida.
His 370-page biography Catherine Hayes: The Hibernian (Irish) Prima Donna, (Foreword by Richard Bonynge), was published in Ireland and the USA simultaneously by the Irish Academic Press in September 2000. This is the first definitive biography about this important pioneering female Irish musical artist. The book tracks her operatic and concert experiences and travels in major European centers, America, Australia and around the world during the nineteenth-century.
In 2001, he was invited by the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin to contribute to its multi-volume Dictionary of Irish Biography, which will be published in November 2009.
He has also contributed to various, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias and, to journals, in the USA and Europe, including Opera Quarterly (Oxford University Press), The Princess Grace Irish Library of Monaco, Database, OPERA magazine (UK), The Donizetti Society of London Newsletter, The Victorian Web, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG), The Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland (UCD Press), History Ireland magazine and the recently published, Encyclopedia of Ireland and the Americas (ABC/CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA.).
His latest work is a biography of the Dublin born, London based Victorian operatic composer and singer, Michael William Balfe (1808-1870) for Balfe’s bi-centennial in 2008. The Foreword is by Richard Bonynge. The biography was published in October 2007 by, Irish Academic Press in association with the Arts Council of Ireland. He was also involved in the production and recording of Balfe’s Italian Opera, Falstaff (1838), which was produced by Opera Ireland in September 2008 in Dublin as part of the Balfe’s bicentennial celebrations.
He is a member of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland, The Donizetti Society in London, The Society for Musicology in Ireland, the British Library, the National Library of Ireland and the Richter Library, University of Miami, Florida. He maintains web sites at: www.balfebiography.com, www.catherinehayes.com , www.britishandirishworld.com