Dora Bright

Dora Estella Knatchbull (née Bright; 16 August 1862 – 16 November 1951) was a British composer and pianist. She composed works for orchestra, keyboard and voice, and music for opera and ballet, and as a captain of the Hallamshire Volunteer Rifle Corps. He was an amateur violinist and in 1873 Dora, aged nine, performed alongside him in a benefit concert for his military unit. Charles Dibdin Pitt, who was a son of the dramatist George Dibdin Pitt, was lessee of the Theatre Royal, Sheffield, until his death on 21 February 1866, aged 47, and was succeeded as lessee of that theatre by his widow. Kate Pitt's works included the plays Not False but Fickle, Noblesse Oblige, Bracken Hollow and Naomi's Sin.

Royal Academy and touring

While at the Royal Academy of Music during 1881–89, Thereafter she lived at Babington House in Babington, Somerset,

She was also the composer for ballets created with Adeline Genée,

Later career and death Bright continued to compose orchestral music into the 20th century: her Variations for Piano and Orchestra was completed during a stay in Paris in 1910. Suite bretonne was performed at the Proms in August 1917. On 28 April 1939 the BBC broadcast her playing from Babington House.

She died at Babington in 1951 at the age of 89.

Works

Many of her works have not survived. La Camargo (20 May 1912, London Coliseum) La danse (17 December 1912, Metropolitan Opera, New York) The Love Song (2 February 1933, London Coliseum)

Piano with orchestra Piano concerto in A minor (1888) Fantasia No 2 in G minor (1892) Variations for piano and orchestra (1910) Variations on an Original Theme of Sir G. A. Macfarren, piano duet (1894)

Songs Twelve Songs (1889) (text by Shakespeare, Herrick and others) There Sits a Bird (1891), (text Thomas Ingoldsby), pub. Pitt & Hatzfeld Six Songs from the Jungle Book (1903) (text by Kipling) pub. Elkin & Co

Opera Quong Lung's Shadow (1903) The Portrait (1911)