28 Jan 2022
Manx Singers and the BBC
by Maurice Powell
This is the first in an occasional series of articles about popular Manx singers who, for various reasons, chose not to develop their careers beyond the Isle of Man, but were nevertheless heard on the radio from time to time performing traditional Manx songs together with popular songs and arias from the worlds of opera, operetta and oratorio.
‘Our May’
May Clague, ‘One of the finest voices the Island has ever produced’, and arguably ‘Manxland’s favourite soprano’ throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, possessed a ‘glorious soprano voice’ and could have enjoyed a career as a concert artiste, ‘but was content to use her rare gift in bringing joy to the people in her own native Island’. Long after she had retired many still recalled her singing The Pipes of Pan from Monckton’s The Arcadians in her palmy days* ‘. . . delivered with real charm in a voice of unusual clarity, (with) a beautiful tone across a fine range’.
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