Opera Scotland

Ida Gilliess Suggest updates

Ida Ghita Gilliess; Madame Corri-Gillies.

Born Edinburgh.

Scottish soprano.

The spelling of her name varied between Gilliess and Gillies. Advance publicity for the Scottish tour declares that she had studied with Rossini. She sang regularly at Covent Garden, and created the title role in a now forgotten work, Ida, or the Guardian Storks (Leslie 1865). The cast of this also included Henry Corri, whom she married in 1869, and the famous contralto Madame Patey.

Ida Gilliess's repertoire seems to have been mainly at the demanding end of the lyric field - on tour she usually sang three times a week, in roles such as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Leonora in Il trovatore, Elvira in Ernani, Lady Harriet in Martha, and the title roles in Maritana, Lurline,  La sonnambula,  Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Lucrezia Borgia.

 

Dundee Advertiser: Friday, April 9 1869 p7

Marriages

At St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Dundee, on the 7^th inst., by the Rev Henry Macnamara, Henry Corri, director of the Grand English Opera Company, to Ida Ghita, eldest daughter of the late Lieut-Colonel Gilliess, Scots Fusilier Guards, grand-daughter of General Bourke, late Governor of Newfoundland, and cousin to the Cluny Macpherson of Cluny.

 

South London Press: Saturday, June 24 1899 p3

Mdlle Ghita Corri

A marriage has been arranged and will take place at St Augustine's, Honor Oak Park, on Wednesday, June 28, at 2 o'clock, between Richard Neville Lynn, only son of the late Captain Richard Lynn, and grandson of the late Colonel Charles Neville Lovell, RA, and Ghita Corri, prima donna, Italian Opera, Carl Rosa, &c., and of the Joachim, Hallé, and Crystal Palace concerts, only daughter of the late Mr Henry Corri and Madame Ida Gilliess Corri, of Furze Bank, Honor Oak.