Sherry and the Vikings
QUESTION
Following the answer about Eurovision star Eimear Quinn, how did one of the winners from the year before, Kildare woman Fionnuala Sherry, come to represent Norway? FIONNUALA Sherry was half of an instrumental duo, Secret Garden, which won Eurovision for Norway in 1995.
Born in Naas, Co. Kildare, in 1962, Fionnuala began playing the violin at an early age, eight. When she was 15, her family moved to Dublin so that she could more easily pursue her musical education. She graduated with musical honours from Trinity College, Dublin, and started her playing career with a ten-year-long stint as a member of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.
She went on to collaborate with many well-known musicians and groups including the Chieftains, Wet Wet Wet, Bono, Chris de Burgh, Sinéad O’Connor and Van Morrison. Fionnuala collaborated with a Norwegian composer, arranger and pianist, Rolf Løvland, in forming an instrumental duo called Secret Garden.
Ireland had won Eurovision three times during the early 1990s – in 1992, 1993 and 1994. As a result of the 1994 win, Dublin became the venue for 1995’s 40th Eurovision Song Contest. It was staged in what was then the Point Theatre and the show was presented by RTÉ’s Mary Kennedy.
The performance for Norway, in which Fionnuala Sherry took part as one half of the Irish-Norwegian duo, was a mainly instrumental piece, called Nocturne. It contained a mere 24 words but had long violin solos performed by her. It was the only time in the history of Eurovision that a mainly instrumental piece has won the top prize.
The success of Secret Garden in Eurovision paved the way for the duo’s success with their first album, Songs From A Secret Garden. It sold a million copies worldwide and went gold in Fionnuala Sherry’s home country. Secret Garden turned out a total of nine albums between 1996 and 2016, and four compilation albums were released between 1998 and 2004.
Secret Garden’s most famous song, You Raise Me Up – with lyrics by Brendan Graham – was performed by Brian Kennedy and went on to be recorded by over 100 other artistes.
Fionnuala Sherry’s debut solo album, Songs From Before, was released in 2011, a release that had been awaited for years.
Fionnuala’s instrument of choice, for both live and studio work, has long been a violin made in England in 1790. In her personal life, she married a businessman, Bernard Doyle, in 2010.
Her career was interrupted by a bad fall in February, 2015. At nine o’clock one morning, she was returning from getting a newspaper on Shelbourne Road, in Dub- lin, accompanied by her dog Yogi, when she had a fall.
She broke her right wrist, on her bowing arm, crucial for playing the violin, as well as her left elbow. She said at the time the accident would have serious implications for her career, but following intensive treatment, she was confident of returning to full fitness and her musical career.
After her part in helping Norway win Eurovision in 1995, the following year, in Oslo, Eimear Quinn won the contest for Ireland, the last in a long line of Irish Eurovision successes.
QUESTION
The film The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness, set in China, was filmed in Britain. Where was the epic walk over the mountains undertaken by Gladys Aylward and orphans recreated? THE Inn Of The Sixth Happiness was a 1958 film based on the true story of Gladys Aylward, a British maid who became a missionary in China before and during the Japanese invasion in 1937.
It starred Ingrid Bergman as Aylward and Curt Jurgens as her love interest Colonel Lin Nan. Robert Donat, who played the sympathetic Mandarin of Yang Cheng, died before the film’s release.
The film-makers were criticised for casting Bergman — a tall woman with a Swedish accent — as Aylward, who was a short, brown-haired Cockney.
Likewise, the male leads were not very Chinese (though Jurgens’s character is said to be halfDutch). However, the film was the second most popular movie at the British box office in 1959.
Gladys Aylward’s great achievement — and the central focus of the film — was when she guided a party of more than 100 children across mountains to escape the advancing Japanese army.
Most of the children were played by Chinese youngsters from Liverpool.
The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness was filmed in Snowdonia. The cast and crew stayed in Beddgelert and a Chinese fort was built at nearby Nantmor.
A Chinese village was erected on the terraced workings of an old copper mine near Beddgelert.
Much of the filming was along the Nant Ffrancon valley around Lake Ogwen and up to Cwm Idwal in the foothills of the Glyderau mountains.
Other shots were taken on Snowdon. At one stage, Bergman is looking back along the ridge to Bwlch Glas and points out the Yellow River (actually the river Padarn) to the children. Richard Davies, Beaumaris, Anglesey.
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