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Olga ('Oggie') Lynn
(1882-1961), Singer and singing teacherSitter in 1 portrait
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John Porter
06 February 2020, 16:22
The following is a brief biography I have recently put together for the University of Bristol Theatre Collection.
Olga Lynn was born Olga Loewenthal in Vienna, Austria, in 1822, although her family home when young was in West London. She initially studied with Herman Klein at the Guildhall School of Music, and then for three years with Jean de Reszke in Paris. She changed her name to Lynn at the age of twenty when she settled in London, although to her friends she was always "Oggie". After a brief operatic career she concentrated on giving concerts and recitals.
For many years she was much in demand as a singing teacher, and also as an organiser of charity entertainments. Her friend Cecil Beaton, writing in The Times after her death in 1957, said of her:
"An animateuse, she was not only a born hostess but a born guest. In the 1930s she became particularly indispensable, and lived in a glitter of Christian names. She enlarged her capacity for organizing entertainment; music benefited by the concerts she arranged, and charity by her pageants and tableaux vivants."