THIRTY MEN AND A GIRL. A SINGER'S MEMORIES OF WAR, MOUNTAINS, TRAVEL, AND ALWAYS MUSIC - Tecno-Libro

Elisabeth Parry was born in Aberdeen on 3rd September 1921. She had just left school, planning to study French and German literature at Oxford, when war was declared on her eighteenth birthday, 3rd September 1939. She was already having singing lessons with Mark Raphael in London, and a chance audition with the Staff Band of the Royal Army Medical Corps led to her becoming soprano soloist with them and singing in hundreds of variety shows and classical concerts until the war ended. They toured Britain and the Middle East as Thirty men and a Girl , and Elisabeth was voted Forces sweetheart for Paiforce (Persia and iraq Force). in 1947 she launched and ran the Wigmore Hall Lunch Hour Concerts for young musicians returning from the war. She also auditioned for Benjamin Britten s newly formed English Opera Group, was taken on as an understudy, and found herself unexpectedly singing a principal role, Lucia in Britten s The Rape of Lucretia when the Viennese soprano she was covering had a row and departed for Vie