Whilst he was a member of the school choir at the Holt High
School and an accomplished violinist John Stanton Shirley-Quirk made a
relatively late entry to music as a profession. After a science degree at
Liverpool University and national service in the Royal Air Force he became a
chemistry teacher at Acton Technical College in west London and it was not
until his late twenties that the door opened for him to a long and successful
career as a bass-baritone.
He was born in Liverpool on 28th August 1931, the
son of passport office clerkJoseph Stanley Shirley-Quirk and his wife Amelia (née Griffiths). At the time of his birth
the family home was at 43 Heyes Street L5 but he spent much of his early years living in Wallasey before moving to a council house in
Hunts Cross at 43 Barford Road L24.
John Shirley-Quirk had continued to train as a singer whilst
at university and when he worked as a science teacher. He joined the Purcell
Singers and performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, making his operatic debut in
1962 at Glyndebourne in Pelléas et Mélisande. After a performance in
Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at Ipswich in 1963 he was congratulated by a
stranger who had particularly admired his singing. The well-wisher turned out
to be Benjamin Britten who was effectively auditioning Shirley-Quirk for the
English Opera Group which he duly joined in 1964. This was the start of a long
professional association between the two men in which Shirley-Quirk sang many
leading roles in Britten’s works, often under the composer’s direction. Over
the next four decades he became a major figure in the world of opera,
performing across the globe and becoming associate artistic director of the Aldeburgh
Festival in 1982. He was appointed CBE in 1975. In his later years he taught at
the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and then at Bath Spa University.
His first wife, Patricia
Hastie, died in 1981 and his second wife, Sara Van Horn Watkins, in 1997. He is
survived by his third wife, Teresa May Perez (nee Cardoza), whom he married in
2009, and by two sons and two daughters. Another daughter predeceased him.
He died on 7th
April 2014 in Dorset aged 82.
