Content area
Full Text
STEVE YORK
There are few operatic or recital voices as unique and recognizable as that of British tenor Peter Pears. His bright timbre and musicality were hallmarks of British operatic and concert stages in the middle part of the twentieth century. Pears premiered several important British operatic roles, most notably those penned by Benjamin Britten, and was known for his intellect as much as his musicianship. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Cambridge, Sussex, and York universities, and received a knighthood in 1977. 2006 marks the twentieth anniversary of his death on 3 April 1986.
Born in Farnham in Southeast Great Britain on 22 June 1910, Pears became renowned for his ability to produce a smooth vocal line while retaining clear diction. A natural and perhaps less refined voice, he was equally at home performing both modern operatic roles with ''angular'' vocal lines, and the linear, more melodic songs of John Dowland and his contemporaries. He met Benjamin Britten in 1937, and they developed a deep personal and professional relationship that would last until Britten's death. They spent nearly thirty years living together in the Red House, near the Aldeburgh Festival facilities. It was in this house that each of them died, Britten in 1976, and Pears in 1986. Together they created some of the great operatic moments of the twentieth century. They regularly collaborated on musical and textual aspects of Britten's and other composers' works, and many of Britten's vocal and operatic works were written for and dedicated to Pears (Pears also had early ambitions as a composer, but famously claimed that those aspirations disappeared once Britten entered his life). In addition to his operatic success, Pears was a regular on the recital stage, performing works by such composers as Bach, Schubert, and Dowland, and receiving accolades especially for his sensitivity to the text.
Would Pears have had the same success on the operatic and concert stage had he not met Britten? We will never know, but Pears had started
p.43
a professional vocal career prior to meeting Britten, and he performed a number of standard operatic roles before and after Britten began creating roles for him. One could easily argue that Britten's success as an operatic composer relied directly on Pears,...