Peter Pears

Peter Pears (1910-1986), English tenor, one of the leading singers of his generation, and the foremost interpreter of the music of his partner Benjamin Britten. Born in Farnham, Surrey, Pears began his singing career as a founder member of the Wireless Vocal Octet, later the BBC Singers, in 1934; he also began to pursue a freelance solo career in 1937. He met Britten in 1936, went to Canada and the United States with him between 1939 and 1942, and returned to live with him in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, until Britten's death in 1976. From 1943 to 1945 he was a member of the Sadler's Wells Opera company (now the English National Opera); from 1946 to 1976 he sang regularly with Britten's English Opera Group, as well as appearing as a guest artist at Covent Garden and elsewhere. He was one of the directors of the Aldeburgh Festival from its foundation in 1948 until his death. After Britten's death he helped to set up the Britten-Pears School at Snape, and regularly taught master-classes there. He collaborated with Britten on some of his editions of music by other composers, and on the adaptation of the libretto of Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960).

Pears had a distinctively reedy voice, capable both of great sweetness and great power; his singing was marked by an immense sensitivity to the meaning of the text. He sang a wide range of repertoire, much of it preserved in recordings: it included English lute songs (accompanied by Julian Bream), the part of the Evangelist in the Passions of Schütz and Bach, the solo songs of Purcell, Schubert, Poulenc and many others (accompanied on the piano by Britten), and works by several contemporary composers. But he will be remembered above all as the first, definitive interpreter of the music written for him by Britten over a period of nearly 40 years: the tenor parts in large-scale works such as the Spring Symphony (1949) and the War Requiem (1962); works for tenor with orchestra including the Serenade (1943) and the Nocturne (1958); the series of Canticles, several song-cycles, and many folk song arrangements; and numerous operatic parts including the title roles of Peter Grimes (1945) and Albert Herring (1947), the Madwoman in the church parable Curlew River (1964), and his last great role, Aschenbach in Death in Venice (1973).