page_title: Eileen Sharp
section_title: Early life and D'Oyly Carte
hierarchical_section_title: Eileen Sharp / Early life and D'Oyly Carte
caption_attribution_description: English: Postcard of Eileen Sharp (1900-1958)
context_page_description: Eileen Nora Sharp was an English singer and actress probably best known as the principal mezzo-soprano with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1923 to 1925. For a few years after that, she continued to act in the West End and on tour, but she left the stage after marrying in 1928, making some radio and television appearances in the 1930s.
context_section_description: Sharp was born in Brighton in 1900, the daughter of Louisa Jane (née Newman; 1869–1911) and Ernest Alfred Sharp (1867–c. 1918), a coal factor. Her older brother, Ernest Granville Sharp  (c. 1896–1916), was killed in the Battle of Gommecourt in 1916. After studying at the Royal College of Music in London, where she was awarded a scholarship, Sharp made her stage debut in December 1921 in The Lady of the Rose at the Prince's Theatre in Manchester in a chorus role.
  In March 1922, at the age of 21, she was engaged by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and was immediately cast in the small roles of Kate in The Pirates of Penzance, the fairy Leila in Iolanthe, Peep-Bo in The Mikado, Ruth in Ruddigore and Vittoria in The Gondoliers. From August 1922 to mid-1923 Sharp continued to play all of these roles, adding another small part, Saphir in Patience, to her repertoire. She also understudied principal mezzo-soprano Catherine Ferguson, occasionally playing her parts: Constance in The Sorcerer, Cousin Hebe in H.M.S. Pinafore, Edith in Pirates, Angela in Patience, the title role in Iolanthe, Melissa in Princess Ida, Pitti-Sing in The Mikado, Margaret in Ruddigore, Phoebe in The Yeomen of the Guard and Tessa in The Gondoliers. When Ferguson left the company in July 1923 Sharp became the company's principal mezzo-soprano, playing these parts (originally excepting Edith, which she took on from August 1924), performing them in repertory until June 1925, and becoming popular with audiences.
  Her appearance and acting won praise from reviewers, although her singing came in for criticism. Writing in The Savoyard, R. F. Bourne said of her performance as Mad Margaret in Ruddigore:
  Her interpretation of Margaret was a scintillating one, from her electrifying entrance in Act 1 and her tender and pathetic "To a Garden Full of Posies", to her scarcely controlled primness in "I Once Was a Very Abandoned Person", succeeded by her repeated outbursts in the dialogue which followed.
  She recorded two of her roles with D'Oyly Carte for HMV: Mad Margaret in Ruddigore (1924) and Melissa in Princess Ida (1925).
caption: Sharp in a 1922 postcard
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