Geraint Evans

On the outbreak of World War II, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force; he was trained as a radio mechanic, but also took part in services entertainments.

He then studied with Fernando Carpi in Geneva and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London first, for a short time, with Walther Gruner and then with Walter Hyde.

[6] His Vienna Staatsoper début as a last-minute replacement impressed Herbert von Karajan, who offered him a contract with the company, but Evans declined, believing that his place was at Covent Garden, which he always regarded as his operatic home; despite international success he always called himself "Sir David [Webster]'s boy.

[10] Evans appeared in the premières of many modern British operas, including Vaughan Williams's Pilgrim's Progress (1951); Britten's Billy Budd (1951) and Gloriana (1953), Walton's Troilus and Cressida (1954), and Hoddinott's The Beach of Falesá (1974) and Murder the Magician (1976).

Evans also recorded three Gilbert and Sullivan roles for EMI conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent: Ko-Ko in The Mikado (1957), the Duke of Plaza Toro in The Gondoliers (1957) and Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard (1958).

Lieder did not feature strongly in Evans's repertoire, but he recorded songs from Gustav Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the young Janet Baker in 1966.

Between 1968 and 1981 Evans gave a series of televised masterclasses for the BBC in which he took young professional singers through key operatic works, including The Marriage of Figaro, Falstaff, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, La bohème, Peter Grimes, I Pagliacci and Così fan Tutte.

He was more in demand abroad than at home in this capacity and directed Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Falstaff, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Pasquale in the U.S.[1] In 1984 Evans published his memoirs, A Knight at the Opera, written in collaboration with Noël Goodwin.

[18] Evans's final public appearance was in July 1992 (only two months before his death) at the gala to mark the closure of the old opera house at Glyndebourne, along with Janet Baker, Montserrat Caballé, Cynthia Haymon, Felicity Lott, Ruggero Raimondi, Elisabeth Söderström and Frederica von Stade.