Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty
It’s been a long journey from Dana to Dustin. In March 1970 Dana became our first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. She was surprised by her victory. An A-level student at Thornhill College in Derry, she expected to be back at her desk the week after the excitement of representing her country at The Hague was over. When the count was completed she did not realise she had won. The floor manager had to drag her on stage for the presentation.
She looked like an innocent and charming girl, whom the nuns had let out for the day. As if to make the point, she wore a white bawneen dress, embellished with the embroidery of some west of Ireland nuns.
The country erupted in celebration. There have been Irish Eurovision victories since 1970 – in the 1990s we won it with monotonous regularity – but none had a similar emotional impact. Even ‘official’ Ireland joined in. There is a photograph of Dana with the then President, Eamon deValera. It depicts the blind president gazing theatrically at her Eurovision medal. It seemed as if one of the ‘comely maidens’ of his famous St Patrick’s Day address of 1943 had danced her way into the Áras.
Dana’s victory belonged to a simpler age. We were happy with our destiny as a small nation, only occasionally making a stir on the international stage. Like the Celts of old, we did not expect to be able to establish our own kingdoms but we loved to shake established ones. A victory over England at Twickenham or over France in Paris made our rugby season, regardless of the other results in the season.
We rejoiced in the escapades of Jack Charlton’s Irish team. We did not seriously expect to win the European Championships or the World Cup, but we loved the roller coaster of excitement on which he brought us. Christy Moore’s song, ‘Joxer goes to Stuttgart’, encapsulates the wild abandon of these happy times.
Then the ‘Celtic Tiger’ began to roam our green and pleasant land. Ireland became an economic success story.
Success in this sphere has stimulated a desire for tangible achievement in other areas and an intolerance for perceived failure. Stirring performances and moral victories in sport no longer satisfy our ambitions. So Eddie O’Sullivan, the most successful coach in the history of Irish rugby, had to go after one mediocre season.
Maybe that is why we have indulged ourselves by choosing a song by Dustin, the turkey, to represent us in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The expansion of the competition to include the myriad of new Eastern European states, who, it seems, vote as a clique, means that we cannot hope to win it for the foreseeable future, no matter who we send to represent us.
So we have made a kind of post-modern joke about the contest by having a singing turkey wear the Irish t-shirt.
I can’t help wondering, though, has the joke gone too far. A singing turkey will represent our noble Republic! Some words of Yeats come to mind:
“Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?”
Oh, let us not depress ourselves too much! Let’s get over it. Let us remember the beautiful tempestuous, Margaret Burke-Sheridan, from Mayo, who, for a decade from the 1920s, was one of the leading sopranos in Europe. She died 50 years ago this year.
There are a number of events planned to mark the anniversary. From April 14 there will be an exhibition of the memorabilia of her life in the Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar. There will be a recital there on April 18 with mezzo soprano, Liz Ryan. On May 3, Lyric FM will broadcast a documentary, ‘Maggie from Mayo’. A concert, ‘A tribute to Margaret Burke-Sheridan’, will conclude the celebrations in the John Field Room of the new Concert Hall in Dublin, at 8pm on May 14.
Margaret Burke-Sheridan was born in Castlebar in October, 1889 to John Burke-Sheridan and his wife, Mary Ellen. She was the youngest of five children. Her father was postmaster of the town.
She had a lonely childhood. By the age of eleven, both her parents had died and her older siblings had scattered. The young orphan was enrolled in the Dominican Convent in Eccles Street, Dublin. There one of her teachers, Mother Clement, recognised and nurtured her singing talent. In 1908 she won the gold medal at Feis Ceoil for Mezzo Soprano.
After she finished school, thanks to a generous patron, Lady Palmer, she was able to go to London to continue her musical education at the Royal Academy of Music. In London she met the inventor, Marconi, who told her: “Yours is the voice I’ve been waiting to hear all my life.” Those Italian guys sure know how to charm a woman!
He brought her to Rome where he helped her fulfil her ambition of becoming an opera star. He introduced her to an opera teacher, Alfredo Martini, who told her she was probably too old to learn all the relevant opera techniques. Nevertheless, he took her on as a student. By 1918, she had her first big break when she got the part of Mimi in ‘La Boheme’ at the Opera House in Rome. Her success in the role began a career that scaled the heights of European Opera from the La Scala in Milan to Covent Garden in London. The great composer, Puccini, was especially impressed by her interpretation of characters in his operas.
Her career at the pinnacle of European opera was relatively short. By the end of the ’20s it was effectively over. Coming late to the genre, she had not developed all the techniques to protect her voice. Illness, financial difficulties and a sad love affair added to her problems.
She returned to Ireland in the late 1930s. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Tom, one of the characters in ‘The Great Gatsby’, as “one of these men who reach such an acute limited excellence at 21 that everything afterwards savours of anti-climax.” In some ways that was Margaret’s experience. The generosity of patrons in Dublin and the US enabled her to live a comfortable existence in retirement.
She retained her feisty sense of humour in the face of adversity. According to Anne Chambers, in her biography of Margaret, the redoubtable Bishop Michael John Browne of Galway, when in Dublin, sometimes invited her to dinner at the Gresham. She teased him about his enjoyment of worldly luxuries. He had finely shaped hands which he liked to display in conversation. One day she said to him, “all right, Michael John, we have all seen them, now put them away under the table.”
She got away with it. I wonder what would have happened if a callow curate ventured a similar remark to him at a confirmation dinner in Connemara!
