Anne Smellie Graham Sharp was born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire, the eighth and youngest child in a family of keen amateur musicians.

A contemporary newspaper article reported:[2] From among many hundreds of singers from all over the British Isles a chorus of 71 was chosen for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.

[4] Able to pass as a teenager even in her thirties,[4] she sang the role of "tiresome village child" Emmie Spatchett in Albert Herring, the centrepiece of the first Aldeburgh Festival in June 1948.

Operatic roles included the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute[9] and Micaëla in a concert performance of Bizet's Carmen.

[10] Elisabeth Parry, a contemporary in the English Opera Group, described Sharp as having "... a lovely natural very high soprano voice, which never seemed to give her any problem.

"[9] In 1957 the North Star reviewed her performance in Messiah as follows:[11] Miss Anne Sharp, soprano, heard for the first time in Tain, made an instant appeal, as might be expected from a singer of her calibre and reputation.

All her solos put great demand on voice control and her rendering of the classic "I know that my Redeemer liveth" was a special joy.In December 1950, Sharp married Rev.

[1] She continued her operatic career in London intermittently after her marriage, but after the birth of their daughter in 1953 concentrated on oratorio roles in Scotland.