Richard Lewis (tenor)

Richard Lewis CBE (10 May 1914 – 13 November 1990) was an English tenor[1] of Welsh parentage.

He made his operatic debut in 1939, and from 1947 onwards, sang at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and at Covent Garden (London).

[1] Lewis made a number of recordings, including Messiah (Handel), L'incoronazione di Poppea (Monteverdi), Idomeneo (Mozart), Liebeslieder Walzer and Neue Liebeslieder Walzer (Brahms), Coleridge-Taylor's The Song of Hiawatha, Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony (with Leonard Bernstein), scenes from William Walton's Troilus and Cressida, BBC Studio recording of The Mercy of Titus (La Clemenza di Tito) In English with Joan Sutherland, and four different performances of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, two with Maureen Forrester, (Reiner/Walter) one with Kathleen Ferrier (Barbirolli), and a fourth with Lili Chookasian (Ormandy).

Lewis took the leading tenor roles in Sir Malcolm Sargent's "Glyndebourne" recordings of nine key Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas in the late 1950s and early 1960s where he worked with Elsie Morison and Marjorie Thomas.

In 2000 Elizabeth moved the award to the Royal Academy of Music wishing to help young singers at that more vulnerable time in their careers.