Early Life and Education
Farrell was born in Willimantic, Connecticut, the youngest of four children born to Irish American Catholics Michael Farrell and Catherine Farrell (née Kennedy). Her parents were vaudeville singers who had performed under the name 'The Singing O'Farrells' prior to having children. The family moved quite frequently during Farrell's childhood to various towns in Connecticut. Eileen's first clear memories were of her family's home in Storrs, Connecticut which was where her parents were working as teachers of music and drama at Storrs Agricultural College (now the University of Connecticut).
When Farrell was five years old her family moved back to Willimantic. After attending first grade there, her family moved once again to Norwich, Connecticut after her mother obtained the post of organist at St. Mary's Church in that city. The family remained in Norwich for almost the next 10 years with Farrell completing her Freshman year of high school at Norwich Free Academy in 1935. The family then moved to Woonsocket, Rhode Island and Farrell entered Woonsocket High School in Fall 1936. She graduated from the school in 1939.
Farrell received her early vocal training from her parents during her childhood. Her mother, a talented coloratura soprano, was her primary teacher but her father, a baritone, also occasionally taught her. After graduating from highschool, she moved to New York City in August 1939 to study with retired Metropolitan Opera contralto Merle Alcock. While studying singing with Alcock, she received language coaching from Charlie Baker who was the music director of Rutgers Presbyterian Church. After working with him for a few months, he hired her as a paid singer at Rutgers. When her radio career took off, Baker became Farrell's vocal coach and helped her prepare most of her music. In her autobiography, Can't help singing: the life of Eileen Farrell (1999), she credits Baker with helping her succeed during the early years of her career on radio. Farrell later was a student of vocal and opera coach Eleanor McLellan with whom she credited for giving her a solid technique.
Read more about this topic: Eileen Farrell
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“I am so tired of taking to others
translating my life for the deaf, the blind,
the “I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges
to live it” white women
the “I want to live my white life with Third World women’s style and keep my skin
class privileges” dykes”
—Lorraine Bethel, African American lesbian feminist poet. “What Chou Mean We, White Girl?” Lines 49-54 (1979)
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)