James Doyle had been considered one of Dr Larchet’s most talented students at UCD in the early thirties and in the record time of three years instead of five, he took his degree of B.Mus. with first class honours. Young Doyle had begun his musical studies at eight years of age, when he entered the Royal Irish Academy of Music and became a pupil of Signor Esposito. While there he won the Coulson and Vandaleur Academy Scholarships for piano and harmony. A brilliant musical career was predicted for him by the critic Harold White. This boy’ he wrote, ‘will go far.’
He was then aged thirteen and although he hailed from a musical family it was moderate in circumstances, money being scarce and he was soon sent out to work. But he displayed unusual, ambition and was determined to make music his career. He left school after his primary education and found a job behind a shop counter – his sister was employed in a candle factory. His parents did not, however, stand in their son’s way and took pride in his early music achievements. They were well known in musical circles, his mother singing under her maiden name Lucy Brady, being much in demand as a concert artist. J C Doyle, his uncle, had a fine baritone voice and sang duets with Count John McCormack. James Doyle was eighteen when he joined the Irish Army School of Music as a bandmaster cadet, and after eighteen months’ tuition under Col. Fitz Brasè (famous as one time leader of the Band of the Prussian Guards) young Doyle was given complete command of a band. Realising his shortcomings in education, he studied for the matriculation while in the army and passed it before deciding to go to UCD to complete his music studies.
‘My father was self-taught,’ recalls his daughter Margaret Healy-DoyIe. ‘He had, it seems, lots of self-educator books and was very dedicated and eager for knowledge. He had also a most enquiring mind. And, in order to make some money, he used to play the piano at silent movies in cinemas for which he got a few shilling. He would also accompany my mother as well as his sisters at concerts and earned a guinea a time for this. It was a busy time for the young musician. He was still under twenty when, to the tune of “A Nation Once Again”, and an emotional response from the crowd, he led the No 1 Army Band into the RDS arena for the first Aga Khan show jumping competition.
The soft-spoken army officer who cut a striking figure in uniform, liked to recall other proud moments in his career such as the day he conducted the No 1 Band at the Tailteann Games, where they were awarded the McCormack Cup which he was to receive from the singer himself; marching at the head of the band along the city quays from the Phoenix Park to O’Connell Bridge at the Eucharistic Congress in 1932; and most of all, the pride he felt when he was commissioned and later appointed bandmaster to the band. And in 1936 when he was to become part of Radio Eireann history as he was seconded to the broadcasting services as musical director and conductor of the newly-formed orchestra. Early challenges awaited him in that first year, particularly when he was called on at very short notice to conduct Beethoven’s difficult Choral Symphony (the Ninth) and passed the test.
As in the case of his mentor Dr Larchet, James Doyle was to choose a young musician as his bride. she was Nance McLoughlin, a cellist, and RIAM scholarship winner and FeisCeol gold medallist. They had met shortly after he had graduated from UCD in 1934. Doyle could on occasions display a mischievous sense of humour and Nance McLoughlin, who was more correct, did not always appreciate it. Margaret Healy-Doyle tells the story of how her father once led a pipe band past her mother’s door as she was practising the cello. ‘Apparently he was trying to tease her but disliking pipe bands anyway, my mother didn’t think it funny at all.’
After their wedding, the Doyles settled in a two-storey house in Rathgar Avenue which they named “Halcyon”. Like the Larchets’ home, it too was to often echo to the soft strains of music. Nance Doyle continued with her musical interests, sometimes playing at concerts and at Robert’s Cafe in Grafton Street, and later she joined the Radio Eireann Symphony Orchestra as a permanent casual. Temperamentally, the Doyles were suited to each other and it was a happy home. James liked to accompany himself on the piano as he sang ballads and Victorian songs while Nance on other occasions quietly practised on the cello.
Captain Doyle was recalled to the army on the death of Col. Fitz Brasè in 1940 and was appointed Assistant-Director of the Army School of Music. Before long, he would be made its director, making him the first Irish-born director to fill the post. The energetic Doyle had also found the time to conduct operas for George Sleator’s Dublin Operatic Society and showed himself a skilled as well as an adaptable practitioner. And he was quick to respond to an operatic crisis. Once, in the Gaiety Theatre, he conducted a successful performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Iolanthe” for the Old Belvedere Musical Society at very short notice and without a rehearsal of any kind. Ironically, Harold White’s “Shaun the Post” was the first opera he conducted. White was of course among the first to spot his early talent.
In subsequent years Capt. Doyle’s wife Nance played in the Radio Eireann Symphony Orchestra for some of the DGOS’s biggest nights of opera, often conducted by her husband. Their eldest daughter Ann, a French horn player, would in time join the same orchestra. Discussing James Doyle with his other daughter Paula (Donlon) she remembered being brought to the Gaiety Theatre for rehearsals. ‘I was very small and as my father stood on the rostrum I thought he had great authority. He seemed also to be very patient with the chorus. I think he realised they were amateurs and were giving up their Sundays to come into the theatre. I remember how he would go over again and again, say, the Humming Chorus in “Madama Butterfly” until it was what he wanted. ‘And at home in the evenings he would sit with a musical score on his knees and proceed to mark passages. Later, he and my mother would have supper together and maybe chat about happenings in the musical scene.’
Her father, she recalled, was friendly with John McCormack and he sometimes invited him to the house. As a child she was in her cot once when the great singer was brought up to see her. ‘I was told I must wait in my cot until the musical evening was over. I remember as I waited a long time, I could hear the singing voices below and wondered if they had forgotten me. My parents weren’t party people but sometimes liked to have singers and musicians for a meal or a drink. My father used to find James Johnston and Veronica Dunne jovial company and enjoyed their humour.’
There were only a few occasions on which his daughter Margaret saw him annoyed. One was when Bill O’Kelly sold the boxes on either side of the proscenium arch in the Gaiety Theatre without telling him. ‘It was a big opera he was conducting, probably “Aida”, and he wanted to increase the size of the orchestra so he arranged at rehearsals to put a few of the double basses in the boxes and it had worked out well for him. Can you imagine his dilemma when Bill told him they had been sold to first night patrons. All my father said, it seems, was, “Those front-of-house people have no idea about musical demands.” Generally, I’d say, Bill O’Kelly and himself got on well, though my father was not slow to show he was the boss musically.’
Fred O’Callaghan, Doyle’s army colleague and himself a musician, was of opinion that James Doyle was a musician’s conductor. As he put it, ‘His direction was always informed and secure, his baton work elegant, purposeful and supremely legible. And he had that mysterious ability of some conductors to make his musicians feel at times that they were achieving what in other circumstances would have seemed impossible.’
To Capt. Bill O’Kelly the conductor’s greatest asset was his reliability. As he liked to say, ‘I can ask Jim Doyle to do any opera and he’ll make a good job of it. When I first thought about forming the Dublin Grand Opera Society, Jim’s name was the first I pencilled in in my notebook.’
(Extracted from “Love and Music: The Glorious History of the Dublin Grand Opera Society” by Gus Smith, 1998)
THE MUSICAL DIRECTOR SPEAKS . . [From the 1944 Souvenir Booklet]
It is no mean achievement to perform nineteen different operas and an important oratorio in what amounts to a total run of only thirteen weeks at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. That this feat has been successfully accomplished is due primarily to the loyalty, support and hard work of the members of the chorus. I wish to express my thanks to them and my appreciation, in this connection, of the invaluable services rendered by Miss Julia Gray, our indefatigable chorus-mistress, in preparing so many different works in so short a space of time. I wish also to place on record our indebtedness to Mr. Charles Lynch, who has been associated with me as Guest Conductor since 1941, and has given us all the benefit of his musicianship and artistic experience.One of the problems which confront a Society such as ours is the provision of orchestral material. It is our ambition that some day we may possess our own complete set of orchestral parts of all the popular operas. At present all parts are hired and returned to England at the end of each season after much labour and time have been devoted to marking them here. To have, in addition to a library, our own orchestra with full facilities for an adequate number of combined rehearsals – principals, chorus and orchestra – under conditions similar to those obtaining in the actual performance is the ideal towards which we should strive. Also, I would like to see established in the near future our own Corps de Ballet as an integral part of the Society. However, Rome was not built in a day, the D.G.O.S. is very young, a mere infant in fact, but it is a lusty and thriving infant whose growing pains and attendant squalls have been watched with fatherly interest by Dr. Larchet since birth. To him, our first President, we owe a deep debt of gratitude for his unfailing help and encouragement at all times. And now as we approach with confidence our fourth birthday. I wish to pay tribute to the hardworking and seldom thanked Honorary Officers of the Society, in particular Comdt. W. O’Kelly, who, as Chairman, has guided the youthful steps to the position the Dublin Grand Opera Society now commands in the hearts of the Dublin public.
DOS PERFORMANCES CONDUCTED BY J.M. DOYLE
| Spring 1936 | Faust |
| Spring 1936 | The Lily of Killarney |
| Spring 1937 | Mignon |
| Autumn 1938 | Maritana |
| Spring 1939 | La Traviata |
| Autumn 1939 | Faust |
| Autumn 1939 | Maritana |
| Spring 1940 | Rigoletto |
DGOS PERFORMANCES CONDUCTED BY J.M.DOYLE:
Opera in Ireland 