DISTINGUISHED SOPRANO and singing teacher Patricia MacMahon is making her final concert appearance this Sunday in Dundee’s Caird Hall, when she takes the soprano solo role in Elgar’s monumental oratorio, The Kingdom, with Dundee Choral Union.

It’s a case of life coming full circle for Patricia, who first sang the role 40 years ago as a third-year student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

“It was at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh,” she recalled, “and fascinatingly for me, Neil Mantle, who is now the conductor of Dundee Choral, was a young man in the audience!

“I’ve actually also sung this particular work twice before in Dundee and it’s a real favourite of mine.

“When I was at college, the then principal Henry Havergal was a great Elgar specialist and my teacher, Ena Mitchell, also thought highly of the music and introduced many of her students to it.

“It’s wonderful for the soprano because the music Elgar creates for that voice in The Kingdom is amazing—the main aria is wonderful and it also sticks in my mind because it was the first major aria I sang in public. I also did it for my performer’s LRAM qualification.

“I suppose it’s really very appropriate that it’s going to be my final concert performance, although friends have been teasing me, since I did a big charity event a couple of years ago that was meant to be my swan-song, that I’ve done more farewells than Frank Sinatra!”

Renowned particularly as a recitalist and oratorio soloist, working frequently with major orchestras, accompanists and regularly with the BBC, these days Patricia is also much in demand as a teacher. She started teaching early in her career and says that she gets as much enjoyment out of seeing a pupil doing well as she does from her own singing. Recently, she has had students who have sung with Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Sunday’s concert will be the perfect final flourish for one of Scotland’s most accomplished singers and it’s also a performance that marks the 150th anniversary of the English composer’s birth.

Elgar’s The Kingdom, presented by Dundee Choral Union with soloists Patricia MacMahon, Heather Boyd, Andrew Carwood and Michael Bundy, conductor Neil Mantle and the orchestra of Scottish Opera, is at the Caird Hall this Sunday, March 18 at 7.30pm.