Richard Michael Levey

Richard Michael Levey (25 October 1811 – 28 June 1899), mostly known as R. M. Levey, was an Irish violinist, conductor, composer, and teacher. He was one of a handful of noted musicians who kept Dublin’s concert life in the nineteenth century alive under difficult economic circumstances. Life Levey was born in County Meath, the place name is not established. Levey’s original surname was O’Shaughnessy, but according to one of his most prominent pupils, the composer Charles Villiers Stanford, he changed it “for what he considered to be a more musical one”. Levey was his mother’s maiden name. The name was officially adopted, and all of his children and the following generations were called Levey (according to several sources, Levey had 20 children from three wives). He received tuition on the violin in Dublin by James Barton (c.1785–c.1850) and became a member of the orchestra of the Theatre Royal, Dublin in 1826, aged 15, succeeding Barton as concert master there in 1834. From 1834 until the destruction of the edifice by fire in 1880 he was also the musical director of the Theatre Royal, a role that involved conducting the orchestra, composing more than 100 overtures to plays, and di