Edward Lloyd (tenor)

[3] His father Richard Lloyd had, by invitation, assisted as a counter-tenor on 'Show Sundays' at Worthing when choral concerts were directed by the fourteen-year-old Sims Reeves.

These festivals might include full performances of Messiah, Israel in Egypt and Judas Maccabaeus on successive nights, each being exceptionally demanding for the tenor (but extremely rewarding for one equal to the task).

In June 1891 at Crystal Palace, if Santley was the hero of the hour, Lloyd was delightful in Love in her eyes sits playing and in one of the Chandos Anthems.

[10] In June 1892 a proposed Crystal Palace performance of Handel's Samson was substituted by the familiar Judas Maccabaeus to spare Lloyd the difficulty of the new role.

[11] He appeared on 2 December 1893 at the official opening of the Queen's Hall, in Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise, with Mme Albani and Margaret Hoare, under the direction of Frederick Cowen.

In 1894 it was again Love in her eyes which Lloyd sang to perfection, though again he, Mme Albani, Ben Davies and Nellie Melba all had to accord first place in popular esteem to Charles Santley, who received stupendous applause.

[12] The Philharmonic orchestra gave him a 'mundane' accompaniment in Lohengrin's grail narration in January 1889, and in Siegfried's forge his laugh was too well-bred, 'hardly the exultant shout of a young giant over his anvil'; and William Nicholl was out of tune as Mime.

[17] At the Richter concert of June 1891 he sang Tannhäuser's Rome Narrative and the Siegfried forging music 'very tunefully and smoothly, without, however, for a moment relinquishing his original character as Mr Edward Lloyd.

'[18] In the Lohengrin and Tannhäuser third acts repeated at Queen's Hall in May 1894, Lloyd was 'playing a little to the gallery by a style of declamation not exactly classic, though sufficiently sincere and effective.'

Elgar still hoped for Edward Lloyd to appear at a festival at Covent Garden in March 1904, (to include Gerontius, The Apostles and Caractacus) but his wish remained unfulfilled: 'the great man will not emerge'.

After almost thirty years before the public Edward Lloyd gave his farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall in December 1900, two months after the Gerontius premiere.

Herman Klein said that, like his great predecessor Sims Reeves (who had died in October 1900), although Lloyd was quite unlike him in character of voice and method, both exemplified the purest attributes of the bel canto and upheld the best traditions of the British oratorio school.

In Bach and Handel, modern oratorio, Italian aria, Lied, romance and ballad, he was equally capable of arousing admiration: and he could declaim Wagner with a beauty of tone, a fullness of dramatic expression, and a clarity of enunciation that made his German audiences in London shout for very wonder and delight.'