Hugh Mackey

Hugh Mackey had his first formative artistic experiences in his native city, Belfast: in music, as a chorister in St. Anne’s Cathedral Choir, at the Belfast School of Music where he had his first singing lessons with Sam Denton, and in concert performances of the works of Bach and Britten; and in drama, acting in the plays of Shakespeare and Strindberg at school and touring the local Drama Festivals. He gained a First in Drama and English at Manchester University, where he played Messenger in Euripides’ “Electra”; Sister Ann, the role created by Dan Leno, in the 1901 Pantomime “Bluebeard”; and Robespierre in Büchner’s “Danton’s Death”, and where he simultaneously sang in concerts in the music department and studied at the Manchester School of Music with John Grierson and Dame Isobel Baill