Born Mary Postans in
Kent, daughter of Thomas—the Esq. of Tewkesbury—and Agathe Postans and sister-in-law of the writer Marianne Postans, author of "Western India", Shaw entered the
Royal Academy of Music in London in 1828. She studied there through 1831 and was a singing pupil of
George Smart at the school. She made her professional singing debut in 1834 as a concert singer, and was highly active as a concert and
oratorio singer in her native country for the next five years. In 1835 she married the painter
Alfred Shaw and thereafter appeared under the name Mary Shaw. That same year she performed at the
Concerts of Ancient Music in London and at the York Festival. In 1836 she sang at the festivals in Norwich and Liverpool, the latter in the English premiere of
Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio
St. Paul on 3 October 1836. In 1837 she appeared in several concerts in London sponsored by the
Royal Philharmonic Society and the
Sacred Harmonic Society. She also performed at the
Birmingham Triennial Music Festival. In 1838–39 she appeared as a soloist with the
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 12 concerts under Mendelssohn's baton at the
Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany. Shaw began her opera career in Italy in 1839, making her first stage appearance at the
Teatro Nuovo di Novara as Arsace in
Gioachino Rossini's
Semiramide. She also sang the role Malcolm Groeme in Rossini's
La donna del lago at that house later that year. On 17 November 1839 she made her debut at
La Scala as Cuniza in the world premiere of
Giuseppe Verdi's first opera
Oberto. She then returned to her native country where she was the first to report to England the excellence of Verdi, and managed to draw musicologist and critic
Henry Chorley's interest in the new Italian composer. She was active at the
Royal Opera House and the
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London during the early 1840s, singing such roles as Arsace, Fidalma in
Domenico Cimarosa's
Il matrimonio segreto, and Graeme Malcolm. Her career was cut short later that year when her husband went insane. The strain of the event affected her physically, and she was thereafter unable to sing in tune. After the death of her husband in 1847, she married the lawyer J.F. Robinson. She never performed again after this. She died at Hadleigh Hall in Suffolk in 1876. ==References==