Denne Gilkes was born in 1889 and attended the Royal Academy of Music where she obtained the Licentiate as both performer and teacher in 1910. She was awarded the Gold Medal for piano and was elected an ARAM for services to music.

She returned to her native Scotland and became well-known as a singer, with a particular interest in German lieder, and also a sympathetic interpreter of music by British composers including Somervell and Bantock. She appeared in early revivals of Monteverdi’s operas, as well as Bantock’s Seal Woman at Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

From her arrival in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1936 until her death in 1972, she was the teacher of voice production and singing for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (later the RSC). In the large panelled music room in her “ruined palazzo” over a grocers in the town’s high street she taught many actors including Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, Ian Richardson, Diana Rigg, Paul Scofield and Donald Sinden.