Marie Narelle

Eva Mylott and Marie Narelle were cousins. Both became world-renowned singers – Eva as a contralto, Marie as a soprano. They occasionally performed together.

Catherine Mary Ryan (who became known as Molly) was born in 1870 near Temora. During her early schooling she was taught music and singing.

Molly’s family moved to Candelo where she gained a reputation singing at concerts for local charities.

In 1891 she was married in Sydney, but returned to Candelo without her husband but with three small children about 1894. She became a music teacher in Candelo, often riding or travelling by horse and sulky to visit her pupils.

She was ‘discovered’ singing at Cobargo Catholic Church by Bishop Joseph Higgins, then the Auxillary Bishop of Sydney. She returned to Sydney where she received lessons from Madame Ellen Christian who had taught both Nellie Melba and Eva Mylott. She also opened a music studio in W.H. Paling’s building (W.H. Paling then being Sydney’s leading music retailer) in George Street.

Molly took the stage name ‘Marie Narelle’, the Narelle reputedly as a ‘good luck’ move from Aboriginal Queen Narelle Merriman, the wife of Umbarra, or King Merriman, a leader of the Yuin nation.

Marie’s specialty was singing Irish and Scottish ballads (hardly surprising, considering her Irish heritage!) and she became known as ‘the Australian Queen of Irish Song’.

She was invited to sing at the closing of the Cork International Exhibition in 1902. In Ireland she received widespread acclaim with one opinion being that it ‘took an Australian to teach the Irish to render their own songs.’

She then went to the St Louis World Fair as part of the Irish cultural delegation and, in 1906, made a wax cylinder recording for Thomas Edison.

In 1910 she settled in New York. The following year she remarried.

In 1925-26 she made a final tour to Australia which included a concert in Candelo.

Marie died in England in 1941. Her headstone is now in the grounds of the Temora Rural Museum after construction of a children’s playground necessitated its removal from what had previously been a churchyard.

Marie believed that it was 'the Australian personality that has made the Australian voice. We are a natural people . . . free in all we do and say and think, and it is that freedom, I believe, that makes us good singers'.