ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

Thurston Dart was at the center of the early music revival in England during the 1950's and 1960's. A noted scholar and musicologist as well as a skilled conductor and keyboard player, Dart, in his work with Philomusica of London and later with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, revolutionized the performance and perceptions of Baroque and early Classical-era music. Dart's scholarly demeanor prevented him from ever achieving the kind of fame that his collaborator and colleague Neville Marriner did, and chronic ill-health brought an end to his career just at the time that audiences were beginning to take Baroque music more seriously and kept him from becoming the kind of household name that Marriner, Christopher Hogwood, or Niklaus Harnoncourt became later in the decade, when authentic performance of early music became a major part of the classical recording business.

Dart was born in Kingston, and educated at Hampton Grammar School. He was a chorister at the Chapel Royal in Hampton Court. In 1938 and 1939, he studied at the Royal College of Music, and later earned a Bachelor of Science degree at University College, Exeter. During World War II, Dart served as an officer in operational research in the Royal Air Force. During his wartime service, he chanced to meet Neville Marriner, a young violinist whose music studies had also been interrupted by the war who was recovering from battlefield wounds--the two struck up a friendship that was to prove pivotal to both of their careers. After the war, he continued his studies in Brussels with Charles van den Boren, and in 1947 he became an assistant lecturer in music at Cambridge. During the late 1940's, Dart served as editor of the Galpin Society Journal and was involved in the editing and organizing of several other scholarly musical projects, including serving on the editorial committe of the Purcell Society, and was later a member of the library committee of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

Dart began giving recitals on the harpischord, organ, and clavichord during the late 1940's, and made frequent appearance on radio discussing Baroque-era music. In 1950, he made his first recordings, and also recorded with the Jacobean Ensemble, an early music performing group whose members included Neville Marriner. Dart also performed on the harpsichord and organ with the Boyd Neel Orchestra. He was made a full lecturer at Cambridge in 1952, and also granted a fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge that same year. The departure of Boyd Neel from the directorship of the orchestra bearing his name led Dart to take over the job of conducting the group, which was renamed Philomusica of London.

During his association with the Jacobean Ensemble and his four years conducting Philomusica of London, Dart made recordings of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and the Orchestral Suites, as well as the Double Violin Concerto, the Flute Concerto, and the Harpsichord Concertos, John Dowland's Lachrymae, Handel's Water Music, the best known serenades of Mozart, various works of J.C. Bach, and concerti grossi by Scarlatti, Corelli, and Geminiani. In 1954 he published The Interpretation of Music, an important study text. Much of his work involved the scores of J.S. Bach, most notably the Brandenburg Concertos and the Orchestral Suites, whose interpretation he revised in a radically new fashion for the recording by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields released during the early 1970's. Dart wrote numerous articles on the interpretation of keyboard works by Bach, Handel, and Purcell, and made many recordings of those pieces. He supervised the revisions in the performing editions of the vocal music of Williams Byrd and Francois Couperin, and was also renowned for his collection of antique instruments, manuscripts, and early printed editions of Baroque scores that greatly aided his scholarly activities.

Dart's academic tenure at Cambridge during the early 1960's was marred by intra-faculty disputes, and ended in 1964 when he accepted the King Edward Professorship of Music at the University of London. Until his death, Dart served as a professor at King's College, London University. As his health declined during the 1960's, he withdrew from the conductor's podium, and later ceased his keyboard recitals as well. He continued his scholarly activities, however, until shortly before his death, and saw his work embodied in the performances and recordings of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. ~ Bruce Eder

Among the major opera stars of the 20th century, soprano Joan Sutherland excelled in bel canto roles and later in dramatic coloratura singing. Her voice was legendary for its agility, accuracy, and brilliant upper register.

Sutherland was born on November 7, 1926, in Sydney. Her parents were from Scotland. Sutherland's mother was a mezzo-soprano and gave her singing lessons all through her childhood and adolescence. At 18, she began voice lessons in Sydney with John and Aida Dickens, who directed her into the soprano range (she began as a mezzo like her mother). Sutherland made her debut in 1947 in a production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. In 1949, she won Australia's Sun Aria competition, and after several more performances and competition wins in Australia, she moved to London, enrolling at the Opera School of the Royal College of Music for studies with Clive Carey. She became a utility soprano at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and made her debut there in 1952 in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K. 620. After several other small roles, she sang her first leading role there later in the year, that of Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera. At this point, Sutherland aspired to a career as a Wagnerian dramatic soprano. It was conductor Richard Bonynge, whom she married in 1954, who persuaded her to focus on Italian bel canto repertory instead. Bonynge would go on to conduct many of her performances and recordings from the 1960s through the '80s.

When Sutherland switched to bel canto opera, success came quickly. One breakthrough occurred at Covent Garden on February 17, 1959, when Sutherland sang the lead role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. At the time, bel canto operas -- by the likes of Donizetti, Rossini, and Bellini -- were less often heard on British stages than they are today, but Sutherland's voice, seeming to bloom into an effortless upper register, quickly made converts of British operagoers. It wasn't long before her prominence became international. She made her debut at Italy's La Scala in 1961, again as Lucia di Lammermoor, and she took the same role in November of that year at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. By that time, word of her talents had spread, and fans began lining up at 7:30 a.m. to buy tickets. They rewarded her with a 12-minute ovation. That year, she was signed to the Decca label and released a recording of Lucia di Lammermoor; the recording remains in print in Decca's Legendary Performances series. Her album The Art of the Prima Donna won a Grammy award in 1962 for Best Classical Vocal Performance; she was the first Australian so honored.

Sutherland soon made appearances at most of the world's major opera houses, and between then and her retirement in 1990, she was one of the world's top opera stars. She did not neglect her native Australia, for she and Bonynge formed their own company and toured Australia with it during the 1965-1966 season. Bonynge was named music director of the Australian Opera in Sydney in 1976, and Sutherland frequently appeared there. Sutherland's recording career on Decca got underway in earnest in the mid-'60s as she made numerous recordings of operas by Handel, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, and others. As of 2022, her recording catalog comprised more than 150 items, the vast majority of them full-length operas. Sutherland was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979. After her retirement in 1990, she lived quietly in Switzerland. Sutherland died in the Swiss town of Les Avants on October 10, 2010, at the age of 83. ~ James Manheim

Peter Pears, for many years, embodied British vocal music, both opera and song. Benjamin Britten wrote 14 operas and over 50 songs and song cycles for him, and he appeared in the premieres of many other major English works. He was one of the three founders of the Aldeburgh Festival, and he and Britten established the Britten/Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies, where he directed the various singing programs until his death.

Given these impressive credentials and influence, it is rather surprising that as a singer he had distinct limitations. While he was capable of excellent singing, his voice was not especially beautiful, with a rather reedy tone, and at times also with a pronounced wobble. However, his musical intelligence, elegant phrasing, and expressive use of text and the vocal line were to create his place in music history.

His first musical career plan was to be an organist, and he studied that at the Hertford College of Oxford, but he later enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London, where he remained from 1933 to 1935 as an "Operatic Exhibitioner." He then pursued studies with Elena Gerhardt and Dawson Freer. He began his professional singing career as a member of the BBC Singers in 1934, and it was through that group that he and Britten first met.

His first recital with Britten was in 1937 at Balliol, followed by a tour of the United States and Europe performing chamber music, including material written by Britten. When they returned, they performed his Michelangelo Sonnets at Wigmore Hall. His operatic debut was as Hoffmann in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann at the Strand Theater in London in 1942; he joined the Sadler's Wells Opera Company in 1943, singing lyric tenor leads. Britten had begun to write the role of Peter Grimes for him, with funding from the Koussevitsky Foundation, and the opera had its world premiere in 1945 at the Sadler's Wells. Thereafter, while he still appeared in other composer's works, he and Britten were an established musical team, and the next decades saw the appearances of many more operas written for Pears. In 1946, he created the role of the Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia, the title role of Albert Herring in 1947, Captain Vere in Billy Budd in 1951, Essex in Gloriana in 1963, Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw in 1954, Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1960, and Aschenbach in Death in Venice in 1973. He also created the role of Pandarus in Walton's Troilus and Cressida. In the song repertoire, he premiered Berkeley's Stabat Mater, Tippett's A Child of Our Time and Boyhood's End, as well as Britten's Michelangelo Sonnets, Donne Sonnets, and Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings, to name just the most famous. He was a noted student of early music, frequently performing English lute songs in his recitals, and he and Britten published editions of several songs by Purcell.

While most strongly associated with English music and English venues, he was also a noted soloist at the Holland Festival and the Salzburg Festival.

Pears and Britten were necessarily discreet about the intimate nature of their relationship, but in music history, their lifelong partnership and love affair is one of the most productive and influential, perhaps surpassed only by that of Robert and Clara Schumann. They are buried next to one another in Aldeburgh.

One of the leading English basses of his day, Owen Brannigan became strongly associated with the operas of Britten and Mozart. He also sang and recorded a number of roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and while he made numerous appearances abroad, his greatest successes were at English opera houses, most notably Sadler's Wells, Glyndebourne, and Covent Garden. He appeared regularly in concert and recital as well. Despite his reputation in the works of Britten, Mozart, and Sullivan, his repertory was fairly broad, taking in Handel (Acis and Galatea), Cavalli (Calisto), Offenbach (Tales of Hoffman), Purcell (Fairy Queen), and many songs by English composers (Boyce, Morley, Horn, Warlock, Sullivan, etc.), and folk songs, particularly Northumbrian folk songs. Brannigan possessed a rich, powerful voice and made numerous recordings, most notably of the operas by Britten and Sullivan. Many are still available on EMI, Decca, Chandos, Pearl, and Melodram.

Owen Brannigan was born in Annitsford, England, on March 10, 1908. Though he sang in his childhood and teen years, he became a carpenter. Eventually, though, he began studying music at the Guildhall School of Music in London.

Brannigan won the gold medal there in 1942 and debuted the following year at Sadler's Wells -- at age 35! -- portraying Sarastro in Mozart's The Magic Flute. He then became a member of the company, first from 1944-1949 and then from 1952-1958. It was here that Brannigan appeared in two important premieres of Benjamin Britten operas: Peter Grimes (1945), as Swallow, and The Rape of Lucretia (1946), as Collatinus.

Meanwhile, he branched out, debuting at Covent Garden in 1947 and at Glyndebourne in 1948. He sang regularly with both companies thereafter and also appeared in several important Britten premieres for them, including the 1948 first performance of Albert Herring at Glyndebourne, in which he sang Superintendent Budd.

Brannigan made most of his recordings in the 1950s and '60s. Among the more noteworthy efforts were a pair of Malcolm Sargent-led Gilbert & Sullivan operas -- the 1958 H.M.S. Pinafore (as Dick Deadeye) on HMV and the 1961 Pirates of Penzance (Sergeant of Police) on EMI. But he had many other recording successes, including the 1970 Decca effort of Purcell's Fairy Queen, with Britten conducting. Brannigan was named an Officer of the British Empire by the Queen in 1964. He died from pneumonia in 1973, suffering from the affects of a serious automobile accident the previous year.