John Coates (tenor)

For more than 40 years, with only a four-year interruption for military service during World War I, he overcame the limitations of a voice that was not naturally large by impressing listeners with his intense artistic expression, lively diction, musical versatility and memorable stage presence.

He studied voice under multiple teachers: in Yorkshire under J. G. Walton, Robert Burton and J. C. Bridge, in London under W. Shakespeare and T. A. Wallworth, and in Paris under Jacques Bouhy.

After further training, he was engaged by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for its 1894 tour, at first playing the baritone role of Mr. Goldbury in Utopia Limited in the original American production.

[5] In the later 1890s, Coates left the stage for a medical operation on his vocal cords and further study,[7] and reappeared as a tenor in light opera in 1899–1900 at the Globe Theatre in London.

[8] Here he was in enthusiastic company with Marie Brema (Beatrice), David Bispham (Benedick), Suzanne Adams (Hero), Pol Plançon and Putnam Griswold, though the press did not much appreciate the value of the work or their efforts.

[5] In 1902, he was heard at the Berlin and Hanover royal opera houses and, in 1906, at key venues in Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Mannheim and Paris, plus the Cincinnati May Festival.

[10] Coates took part in the May 1908 premiere (concert) performance of Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers, with Blanche Marchesi, under the baton of Artur Nikisch at the Queen's Hall,[11] and in the Thomas Beecham production of the same work at His Majesty's a year later.

[12] He was with the Beecham Company for the spring, summer and winter seasons of 1910, in which the brilliant production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann owed its success mainly to him, and he also appeared in an exceptionally romantic interpretation of Pedro in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland.

[6] Despite his lack of raw vocal power, Coates was still considered to be among the finest of English Wagnerian tenors, especially as Siegfried and Tristan, owing to the strength of his musicianship, his evident intelligence and his impressive deportment on stage.

Wood in the Arthur Sullivan Memorial Concert at Queen's Hall in The Golden Legend, alongside Lillian Blauvelt, Louise Kirkby Lunn and David Ffrangcon-Davies.

"[21] Classical-singing commentator Michael Scott (who, incidentally, calls Coates 'one of the finest English singers on record') notes in The Record of Singing that his repertoire was exceptionally wide-ranging and included Handel's Messiah and Belshazzar, Mendelssohn's St Paul and Elijah, Bach's St Matthew Passion, Elgar's King Olaf and Saint-Saëns's The Promised Land.

[29] (He sang wonderfully, according to the Sunday Times, a courageous thing to do since in his own words he found the sudden death of Elwes in a train accident 'too shocking, too staggering to contemplate.

')[30] From 1920 he began to specialise in song-recitals, of which he gave several each year, favouring all-English performances and championing English composers, but drawing from the repertoire of German and French songs also.

[32] As the 1920s unfurled, Coates faced competition at home from an emerging generation of British tenors led by Walter Widdop and Heddle Nash.

In his last years he thought of going back on the stage and started to slim, but he was seized with anaemia and became permanently confined to bed, frustrated at being unable to assist his country as the Second World War took hold.

[1] Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham remarked of him: 'Coates was among the half-dozen most interesting artistic personalities of the time in England – scrupulous, fastidious and conscientious in all that he attempted.

'[34] In 1924 Eaglefield Hull wrote: 'He unites to a fine tenor voice, wide culture, perfection of vocal declamation and high dramatic attainments.'

He had played many roles at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under Sir Thomas Beecham, and it is a moot point whether he or Gervase Elwes was the finest Gerontius of that era.