Harry Plunket Greene

Harry Plunket Greene (24 June 1865 – 19 August 1936) was an Irish baritone who was most famous in the formal concert and oratorio repertoire. Making a great contribution to British musical life, he wrote and lectured on his art, and enriched the field of musical competitions and examinations. He also wrote Where the Bright Waters Meet (1924) a classic book about fly fishing.

Plunket Greene was born in Dublin, the son of Richard Jonas Greene, a barrister, and Louisa Lilias, daughter of William Conyngham Plunket, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. He was educated at Clifton College and initially expected to follow Law at Oxford. However, after he was 'smashed up' in a football accident he had a year's convalescence. Discovering his musical calling he studied under Arthur Barraclough in Dublin before attending the Stuttgart Conservatory for two years under Hromada in the early 1880s. He also studied in Florence with Luigi Vannuccini (a pupil of Francesco Lamperti), and in London with J. B. Welsh and Alfred Blume.

He made his debut in London (at the People's Palace, Mile End) in 1888, in Handel's Messiah, and in the next year appeared in Gounod's Redemption. In 1890 he made operatic debuts as Commendatore in Don Giovanni and as the Duke of Verona in Romeo et Juliette, at Covent Garden. Thereafter he elected to make his career in recital.

In oratorio, his first Festival appearance was at Worcester in 1890. Plunket Greene created the title part in Parry's Job, at the Gloucester Festival in 1892. This includes the Lamentation of Job, an extremely long (28-page) and sustained oratorio scena. David Bispham said of his performances that he 'created the part and rendered it many times with superb dramatic feeling.' In this, as in most of Parry's songs, Plunket Greene recognised the perfect declamation of Parry's writing, the accent upon word-values falling naturally and correctly in the music. As a result, he became the original exponent or dedicatee of many of the lyrical works of Parry, and also of Battison Haynes ("Off to Philadelphia"), and of Charles Villiers Stanford. Stanford wrote Songs of the Sea for him, and the singer also greatly admired Stanford's Cushendall and Irish Idyll cycles and the Three Cavalier Songs set to Browning's words. Although his voice was not exceptionally powerful he used it with great style, musicianship and intelligence.

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