Top soprano who returned to childhood home

cials and bits and pieces. We made a record of Lieder – Schumann, Schubert – with him and some friends. I loved it,” she says.

In 1973, Mary came back to New Zealand to sing Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor at His Majesty’s Theatre for the Auckland Opera Trust. The NZ Herald review called O’Brien’s performance “triumphant.”

Three years later, during a surprise visit for her father’s birthday, she appeared in a Max Cryer TV show.

Mary returned to Australia to tour Australian Broadcasting Company over in Auckland, giving recitals Beethoven’s 200th birthday. she was invited to Anne Rasmusin the hills above Florence. There future husband Donald Specht, an “The house where Anne got married Don’s stepsister. He had just come and got dragged along to the wedsays.

Don hit it off straight away. Specht successful in the music business Angeles as a composer/arranger for commercials. “He was originally player and had played with many in bands all over the States. He Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis for time,” Mary says. married within a couple of months at Vecchio in Florence.”We just knew says Mary. The wedding wasn’t a Don’s parents were deceased and couldn’t come all way from New Zeaup my dad on the phone. He had War One and just said, ‘so you’re a Yank?’ I said, ‘yes dad.’” the newly-weds moved to Studio Angeles where Mary met jazz musi Manne, Buddy Collette, Jo Maini, her piano player Lou Levi. re-establish her opera career in the found it difficult. “I went into doing sang in some of Don’s commer-

One-on-one singing lessons soon followed. “You would have a lesson that would take about an hour or so. She was often interrupted by other pupils coming in and would tell you to go over in the corner there and breathe,” she says.

Soprano Mary O’Brien-Specht, who sang on the world stage for five decades, has died, aged 86.

In 1981, Mary performed in the roles of Mrs Hopkins and Lady Boxington in the 1981 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady, alongside Rex Harrison, who was cast as Henry Higgins. “We did a two-year tour across America and Harrison always brought the house down,”

She left Devonport in 1963, at the age of 26. When she was widowed in 2009, she felt the call of her old suburb and returned in 2011.

Mary graduated from St Mary’s in 1954 at the age of 17 and for the next three years continued to study with Sister Mary Leo privately. “I lived at home and had a job down at the Naval base as a gofer. Off I would go to work on my bike at eight in the morning, get off at four and go over on the boat to Auckland, up to St Mary’s and work for the rest of the day there, just really concentrating on singing and learning repertoire,” she says. She also performed regularly in small concerts, often in halls around Devonport.

O’Brien-Specht was born in 1937 at Pentlands maternity hospital on Buchanan St. She was the youngest of three. Her father, James Lawrence O’Brien, was Devonport’s deputy fire chief, and the O’Briens moved to a flat next to the Calliope Fire Station.

She first heard classical music in her grandmother’s Vauxhall Rd home.

The Magic Flute and La Boheme followed.

“I did a lot of things like that and in 1984 I went on tour to London as a personal assistant to Peggy Lee. You always had to call her ‘Miss Peggy Lee.” villes, from North Cape to Bluff,” she told the Flagstaff. Lead roles in Don Pasquale, The Magic Flute and La Boheme followed.

After attending St Leo’s Catholic School in Devonport, she went to St Mary’s College in Ponsonby, where Sister Mary Leo became her singing teacher.

Mary gave her last public performances in the late 1980s. Retired life in Los Angeles was good until 2009, when Don died at age 79. “As we didn’t have children or family over there, two years later, I sold up and came here,” she says.

In 1957, Mary got her first big break. She was to share the lead in the Auckland Light Opera Company’s production of La Traviata with Mina Foley, Sister Leo’s first star student who had studied in Rome, Los Angeles and New York and performed at La Scala in Milan.

In 1958, Mary married New Zealand yachtsman Bernie Skinner. The couple had a son, Paul, but later divorced, and Paul stayed with his father. “Sometimes I think about that. I wanted a career and to go away and Bernie wanted to stay in New Zealand. Another woman might have made a different decision, but it was my decision and I made it. I had to do what I had to do,” she says.

“That was it! She was a wonderful teacher, became a great friend and a very important person in my life,” she told the Flagstaff in a 2016 interview.

And of course she loves being back in Devonport. She has reconnected with Kay McKellar, a childhood friend from St Leo’s school, where McKellar later became a teacher and eventually principal.

Dame Sister Mary Leo, who died in 1989, is best known for tutoring both Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Dame Malvina Major. “I’m what’s known as BK – Before Kiri,” O’Brien-Specht said.

She enjoys being back among the local O’Briens. Both of her siblings are still around: her sister, who became a nun at age 20, in a convent in Dunedin, and her brother, in Papakura. Cousins live in Takapuna and further north.

Professionally, Mary felt trapped in New Zealand. “During the 1960s, it was very difficult to go where you wanted. You had to go by ship anywhere, even Australia. And it took about six weeks to get to Europe.”

In 1963, she moved to Sydney and performed under contract at the Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

Does Mary still sing? “No. My voice failed me in 2010 and I haven’t been able to sing since. And I am deaf in one ear, which is not good.” But during our interview, she often breaks into her favourite songs from various operas.

She left St Mary’s in 1954 at the age of 17, but for the next three years continued to study with Sister Mary Leo privately.

In 1965, she headed for Europe, settling in Linz, Austria as a base for singing around Europe, including at music festivals in Edinburgh, Glyndebourne, Vienna and Dubrovnik. She made guest appearances in opera and oratorio across Europe, as well as London’s Sadler’s Wells Opera as Gilda in Rigoletto and at the Windsor Festival in concert with Yehudi Menuhin.

Mary says one of her favourite pastimes is walking in the half tide across Cheltenham Beach. From her lounge she has a view of Rangitoto Island, another place that reminds her of her grandmother and the way her life has come full circle.

In 1963, She moved to Sydney and performed under contract at the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. “I did Micaëla in Carmen, Marguerite in Faust, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan Tutte, and Louise for an opera on TV called Louise.”

She also performed regularly in small concerts, often in halls around Devonport.

Later this year, Mary plans to visit her son Paul, who now lives in Sydney. “I am very fond of him, his wife and my two grandchildren,” she says.

Then Foley became sick and Mary took over the role as Violetta on her own. “I was only 20 years old. I did eight shows at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Queen St in one week. It was a big risk,” she says.

The Devonport Historical and Museum Society

AGM will be held on 28th May at 3pm

But it was the start of things to come. In 1958, Mary won the John Court Memorial Aria competition and a year later the Mobil Song Quest.

The speaker will be Paddy Stafford-Bush

Afternoon tea will be served. All welcome.

By 1959, she had joined the New Zealand Opera Company and sang as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, the company’s second full-scale production touring through New Zealand. “I did hundreds of Barber of Sevilles, from North Cape to Bluff,” she says. Lead roles in Don Pasquale,

In 1957, she got her first big break. She was to share the lead in the Auckland Light Opera Company’s production of La Traviata with Mina Foley, Sister Leo’s first star student, who had studied in Rome, Los Angeles and New York and performed at La Scala in Milan.

In 1971, she met her future husband Donald Specht, an American, and moved to the US. In 1973, she came back to New Zealand to sing Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor at His Majesty’s Theatre for the Auckland Opera Trust. The New Zealand Herald review described her performance as “triumphant”.

“My grandmother lived in Islington Bay for quite a long time. When she couldn’t handle it there on her own any more, she moved to the house on the land where I live now.”

In 1965, she briefly returned to New Zealand as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. The New Zealand Listener ran an article on her entitled “Singer on her way up.”

Three years later, during a surprise visit for her father’s birthday, she appeared in a Max Cryer TV show.

Foley became sick and Mary took over the role as Violetta on her own. She did eight shows in one week at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Queen St.

In 1958, she won the John Court Memorial Aria competition and a year later the Mobil Song Quest.

By 1959, she had joined the New Zealand Opera Company and sang as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, the company’s second full-scale production touring through New Zealand. “I did hundreds of Barber of Se-

The same year, she headed for Europe. She had only a vague plan. “I wanted to go somewhere where I could become a more rounded personality as a singer, to be able to sing Lieder [German art songs] as well as opera. I was infatuated with a lot of German opera. A colleague who had worked with me in Australia was at the Vienna Volksoper [a major opera house]. I was introduced to an agent there, who got me an audition in Linz. I got the job,” she says. Linz is Austria’s third largest city, just west of Vienna. Mary fell on her feet. She learned to speak

In 1981, O’Brien-Specht performed in the roles of Mrs Hopkins and Lady Boxington in the 1981 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady, alongside Rex Harrison, who was cast as Henry Higgins. “We did a two-year tour across America and Harrison always brought the house down,”

OBrien-Specht gave her last public performances in the late 1980s, retiring to Los Angeles. Donald died in 2009, which led to thoughts of returning home to Devonport.

Her death notice stated: “A voice to be remembered.”

Murray Inglis is New Zealand commercial radio royalty. He was acknowledged as such as early as 1977 by none other than Billboard magazine. In its annual Air Personality of the Year competition, the US music publication crowned Inglis the top radio announcer of the Southern Hemisphere, and among the top ten in the world.

Inglis was blown away. “I literally fell off the chair when I found out and didn’t go to bed for two days,” he says. He also got a kick out of beating his role model John Laws, a hugely successful Sydney radio presenter at the time.

Inglis received the award after he made his mark as Muzza in the Morning on the breakfast show of Radio Avon, an AM station established in Christchurch in 1973. “Radio Avon took Christchurch by storm. The station had 52 per cent of the audience. I did some outrageous things there.”

One was called Phone Fun, where people could call in between five and six in the morning and tell dirty jokes. Another was a fake phone call to Idi Amin. “I was probably New Zealand’s first shock jock,” Inglis says.

Inglis also staged a lock-in by barricading himself into the station’s studio for 48 hours, using a filing cabinet pushed against the door. It was supposedly a protest against being gagged by his bosses, but it turned out to be a publicity stunt for Radio Avon.

Everyone fell for it, he says. “Apparently people outside the station shouted: ‘We want Muzza back!’ TVOne came down to interview me, but when they came up to the window I just pulled the studio curtains shut and wouldn’t talk to them. It even made the New York Times.” hear these guys who sounded like they were having a great time, and I thought that’s what I want to do. Until then, I was going to be a priest,” he says.

His subjects included Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Bob Geldof, David Bowie, Lauren Bacall, Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis and Robin Williams.

The stunt helped Inglis get international recognition. The Billboard award came with a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, where he got to work at WHBQ with US radio personality Rick Dees.

He began in an off-air role in Wellington in

Rubbing shoulders with famous people came with the territory of a radio career. Since his Christchurch days, Inglis has met dozens of celebrities, often interviewing them on-air.

why buy?

just borrow our 700 toys back again, working in London, Memphis, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart, and Christchurch. And he was burnt out.

“Bette Davis was doing a one-woman show in Christchurch in 1976 and I interviewed her on the radio. I spent a hilarious afternoon with Robin Williams and interviewed Michael Jackson in Sydney in the 1980s. He really did speak with that high-pitched voice. I partied with Mick Jagger at the Gluepot. The Boomtown Rats threw me a 40th birthday party.

1959, but by 1963 had graduated to a job at the microphone for a tiny station in South Australia.

Over the next 10 years, Inglis worked at sta-

I had dinner with Peter Ustinov in Christchurch in the 1990s. And I introduced Elton John in front of 70,000 people at Western Springs. It doesn’t get any better than that,” he says.

But this year’s New Zealand Radio Awards blew Inglis away all over again. He reluctantly accompanied Flea FM’s owner John Grant to the ceremony. “John told me he had a spare ticket and asked me to go with him. I was hesitant and halfway through the night I was ready to leave. The next minute I look up and there is this huge picture of me on the screen. I put my head between my knees and don’t remember much else, except that it was pandemonium. I was buzzing for days.”

Join Today

Learning Assistant Part-Time Vacancy

playawhile.org

Milford School is looking for a flexible and reliable Learning Assistant committed to working approx 20 hours per week (9-1.30), Monday to Friday.

You will need to have a high level of empathy and enjoy working with tamariki with health and behavioral needs.

If you are keen to join a supportive and fun-loving team please email your CV, including referees, to hr@milford.school.nz told the Flagstaff.

“Radio has been my life almost to the exclusion of everything else,” Inglis says. His home life had radio connections as well. He recalls flatting with radio personalities Pam Corkery and Paul Holmes. And the often antisocial hours of a radio host took their toll over the years.

He said radio had given him an on-air personality often at odds with his off-air self. “Muzza is an outgoing guy and Murray is a lot more quiet and shy.”

When his mother and younger brother died within four weeks of each other in 2000, it shook Inglis to the core. His father and older brother had both died 20 years earlier and he was now the last family member standing. “I guess I had a nervous breakdown,” he says.