[3] His debut was in the Australian Opera's 1967 production of Die Fledermaus, at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne,[1] alongside singers such as Robert Gard and June Bronhill.
John Pringle's repertoire included the title roles in The Barber of Seville (Rossini), Don Giovanni (Mozart), Falstaff (Verdi), Gianni Schicchi (Puccini) and Eugene Onegin (Tchaikovsky).
Other roles included Malatesta and Dulcamara (Donizetti); Lescaut, Marcello, Sharpless, Ping (Puccini); Beckmesser (Wagner); Nick Shadow (Stravinsky); Golaud (Debussy); Politician in The Eighth Wonder (Alan John); Zurga (Bizet); and roles in Death in Venice and The Rape of Lucretia (Britten); Capriccio and Intermezzo (Richard Strauss); Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Shostakovich); The Tales of Hoffmann (Offenbach); and operas by Janáček, Cilea, Sullivan, Massenet and Gounod.
His final performance was in Sydney on 24 October 2008, a week after he turned 70, as Jaroslav Prus in Janáček's The Makropoulos Secret, in a production directed by Neil Armfield.
He has been there almost from the beginning and has stuck with us through thick and thin, a great actor, a magnificent singer and, above all, a real ensemble player loved and admired by colleagues and audiences alike.