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| November 23rd | Fanny Moody, opera singer (Birth) |
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The singing talents of Redruth – born Fanny Moody (1866 – 1945) were recognised at local concerts by the Basset family of Tehidy who paid for her training in London at the singing academy run by the contralto Charlotte Sainton – Dolby and where Moody stayed with the physician Sir Morell Mackenzie and his wife. Moody’s first big break came when she sang for the Carl Rosa Opera Company (described as Britain’s most influential opera company of the 19th century) in its 1887 production of Balfe’s ‘The Bohemian Girl’. It was at this time that she met and married the bass, Charles Manners (born Southcote Mansergh), and together they formed the ‘Moody-Manners Opera Company’. As well as starring at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, she also toured extensively in North America and South Africa, becoming known as ‘the Cornish Nightingale’ and, in 1895, she was presented with a tiara with diamond representing the fifteen bezants of the shield of the Duchy of Cornwall (just visible in the profile picture) by Cornish miners in the Transvaal. By 1916, the couple ran three Moody – Manners touring companies, the principal company having 115 members and a repertoire of thirty operas. Charles Manners died in 1935 and, with the outbreak of the Second World War, Moody auctioned her tiara to raise funds for the Red Cross. She never really retired and died in Dublin in 1945.
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