Cecilia Young

According to the music historian Charles Burney, she had "a good natural voice and a fine shake [and] had been so well taught, that her style of singing was infinitely superior to that of any other English woman of her time".

Although her younger brother Charles was a clerk at the Treasury and not a professional musician, his daughters Isabella, Elizabeth, and Polly followed in the foot steps of their aunts to become successful singers.

The work premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre on 8 January 1735 and Young's performance, along with the rest of the cast, was enthusiastically received.

After their marriage, she appeared in several of her husband's stage productions including the immensely popular masques Comus (1738), Alfred (1740), and The Judgement of Paris (1742).

However, this changed when her sister-in-law and celebrated actress/singer Susannah Arne moved to Dublin in December 1741 to avoid the scandal surrounding her recently failed marriage to actor Theophilus Cibber.

The Arnes stayed for two seasons in Dublin and staged a number of Handel oratorios in addition to several of Thomas's works.

Young sang in most of these concerts including the premiere of her husband's first oratorio The Death of Abel at Dublin's Smock Alley Theatre on 18 February 1744.

Shortly thereafter, Thomas Arne began a long and fruitful association with concerts in London's pleasure gardens when vocal performance became one of the regular forms of entertainment.

In 1755 the couple returned to Dublin for performances at the Smock Alley Theatre and while there the marriage broke down with Thomas leaving Cecilia in Ireland with her young niece Polly.

He agreed to support her with £40 a year, though in 1758 her friend Mrs Delany wrote that she was "much humbled", teaching singing in Downpatrick: "She has been severely used by a bad husband, and suffered to starve, if she had not met with charitable people".