Veronica Dunne, Irish operatic soprano and voice teacher also known as Ronnie Dunne, who is described as “an Irish national treasure,” dies on April 5, 2021. After a successful operatic career at the Dublin Opera and the Royal Opera House in London, she focuses on voice teaching in Dublin, where she trains future international singers. The triennial Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition is established in 1995. She receives the National Concert Hall Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

Dunne is born in Dublin on August 20, 1927. She is the youngest of three children of a well-to-do family. Her father works as a master builder whose construction firm builds the church in Foxrock, Dublin, in the early 1930s. She begins singing when she is 11 years old. She studies initially in Dublin with Hubert Rooney. She then sells her pony for £125 in order to fund her dream of studying music in Italy. She goes to Rome in 1946 to study with Soldini Calcagni and Francesco Calcatelli. Her family meets with Sarsfield Hogan, the secretary of the Department of Finance at the time, to discuss the issue of her monthly allowance, which would breach foreign exchange controls. Sarsfield permits her to receive the money on the condition that she return to Ireland in the future and teach her young compatriots to sing.

Dunne makes her operatic debut in Dublin in 1948 as Micaëla in Georges Bizet‘s Carmen with the Dublin Grand Opera Society, and appears there in 1949 as Marguerite in Charles Gounod‘s Faust. She wins the Concorso Lirico Milano in 1952, which brings her the role of Mimì in Ruggero Leoncavallo‘s La bohème at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan, which in turn brings her a contract from the Royal Opera House in London, where she first appears as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. She performs at the house alongside Joan Sutherland and Kathleen Ferrier. In 1958, she appears as Blanche in the first performance at the house of Francis Poulenc‘s Dialogues of the Carmelites. She also performs with the Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, and Wexford Festival Opera. She returns to the stage in 2002 to appear as Countess in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky‘s The Queen of Spades at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.

Dunne gives a number of world premieres of works by contemporary Irish composers including Never to Have Lived is Best (1965) by Seóirse Bodley, as well as Irish Songs (1971) and The Táin (1970) by James Wilson.

Dunne is appointed a voice teacher at the then Dublin College of Music (today Technical University Conservatory of Music and Drama) in 1962. She is awarded an honorific doctorate in 1987. She retires in 1992, but continues to teach at the Leinster School of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Her students include Patricia Bardon, Orla Boylan, Mary Brennan, Tara Erraught, Lynda Lee, Colette McGahon, Anthony Kearns, Suzanne Murphy, and Finbar Wright, who have all sung in the major international opera houses. In 2014, at the age of 87, she continues to teach 39 hours per week.

The triennial Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition, established by the Friends of the Vocal Arts in Ireland in 1995, awards bursaries in her name. Recipients included Orla Boylan, Sarah-Jane Brandon, Tara Erraught, Pumeza Matshikiza and Simon O’Neill. She receives the National Concert Hall Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

Dunne marries Peter McCarthy in 1953. The couple has two children.

Dunne dies at the age of 93, on April 5, 2021. Irish President Michael D. Higgins pays tribute to Dunne, saying that she “captivated millions with her singing” and adding, “The legacy she leaves lies in the talents of those scores of others whose talents and performances she unlocked with her enthusiasm, energy and commitment as a teacher and friend.”