Teresa del Riego

Teresa Clotilde del Riego was born in London, England to an English mother and Spanish father. She began playing the piano aged five and wrote her first song at the age of 12.^[1] She studied piano, violin, singing and composition at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and the West Central College of Music in London with Sir Paolo Tosti and Marie Withrow, and in Paris. Del Riego was heavily involved in World War I charity concerts. She married her husband, Francis John Graham Leadbitter, in 1908; he died in action in 1917.^[2] They had one son. She was a member of the Society of Women Musicians and of the Cowdray Club in Cavendish Square.^[3]

Del Riego composed throughout her life, including piano, chamber, and orchestral works, though her best known pieces were songs written in the first decade of the 20th century.^[4] She also taught singing and accompanying.

Her principal residence in later life was at 'Sycamore', Mundesley Road, Overstrand in Norfolk.^[1] Teresa del Riego died in London at the age of 91^[5] and is buried in the cemetery at Overstrand. Nearby are the graves of her sister Agnes, the first woman scoutmaster and founder of the Women's Territorial Signalling Corps,^[6] and her brother, John Anthony del Riego (stage name Philip Desborough).^[7]

Del Riego wrote over 300 ballads and sacred pieces which were often performed by the best-known singers of the day, such as Emma Albani, Nellie Melba, Gervase Elwes, Clara Butt and Maggie Teyte.^[8] The most popular songs continued to be performed into the 1950s. O Dry Those Tears was first published in 1901 and sold twenty three thousand copies in the following six weeks.^[9] The King's Song was first sung by Ben Davies at the Royal Albert Hall Coronation Concert of Edward VII in 1902.^[3] Another song, Homing, was performed fifteen times at the Proms between 1918 and 1926.^[10] A tribute, 'Sixty Years of Song', was broadcast by the BBC Home Service in April 1954 to mark her 78th birthday.^[11]

Her song 'The Awakening', a setting of the poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, was first performed in London in January 1911, and was taken up by the suffrage societies, with 1,000 copies printed up to be sold in suffrage shops.^[12] It was revived for a BBC radio broadcast in September 2024.^[13]

Selected works include: