Joseph Ward OBE (22 May 1932 in Preston[1] – 27 April 2019[2][3]) was an English tenor, formerly a baritone, who created roles in operas by Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett.
[4] As a baritone he created the role of Starveling in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960), and in the same year sang the same composer's eponymous hero Billy Budd in the radio-broadcast premiere of the revised two-act version.
[2] A friend of Joan Sutherland's, he was a principal tenor with the Sutherland-Williamson Grand Opera Company in a 1965 tour of Australia.
[2] In 1972, he founded the Opera School at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and subsequently became Head of Vocal Studies there in 1986.
In Australia, he directed productions of Billy Budd and Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Pilgrim's Progress.