[1][2] Born in Cape Town, South Africa,[3] Porter studied organ at University College, Oxford in the late 1940s.
Stanley Sadie, in the 2001 edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, wrote that Porter "built up a distinctive tradition of criticism, with longer notices than were customary in British daily papers, based on his elegant, spacious literary style and always informed by a knowledge of music history and the findings of textual scholarship as well as an exceptionally wide range of sympathies.
[2] He authored the librettos for John Eaton's The Tempest, after Shakespeare,[7] and Bright Sheng's The Song of Majnun, based on the ancient Persian story.
[8] As a scholar, Porter notably discovered excised portions of Verdi's Don Carlos in the library of the Paris Opera, which led to the restoration of the original version of the work.
[3] He continued attending performances, including one of Die Meistersinger, even while sick, and his final two reviews for Opera, of Gaetano Donizetti's Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo and I pazzi per progetto, went to press hours before his death.