BASIL WALSH – Published Author & Writer of 19th Century Opera Biographies & Performance History
Basil Walsh is a retired advertising & marketing executive who lives in Palm Beach County, Florida. He is a board member of Classical Arts Ireland (www.calssicalartsireland.com)
Dublin, which manages the Metropolitan Opera’s HD Movie House operatic distribution presentations throughout Ireland annually.
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 was recently published by Cambridge University Press.
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 with great acclaim.
He is a member of the, 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/BLOG sites at: www.catherinehayes.com , www.britishandirishworld.com and http://balfecontinentaloperas.wordpress.com/
Basil Walsh, Florida USA
Contact: basilwalsh@msn.com
Irish Classical Music Pioneers 
Fascinating have you any more information william conran
Kind regards
Rosemarie Conran
[…] International Association of Music Libraries met for its annual conference in Dublin this past May. Basil Walsh has written a very interesting article about the development of classical music in Ireland at […]