Donald Adams
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Charles Donald Adams (December 20, 1928 – April 8, 1996) was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in bass-baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
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[edit] Beginnings and D'Oyly Carte years
Donald Adams was born in Bristol and educated at the Bristol Cathedral School, where he sang as a chorister in the cathedral and played Thomas a' Becket in Murder in the Cathedral at the age of sixteen. He made his professional debut as an actor (while still at school) with the BBC Repertory Company in 1944. He interrupted his fledgling stage and radio career to serve in the British Army, where he acted as resident producer of the Army Repertory Theatre at Catterick Camp. After his service, he returned to acting and music-hall performances, gaining good notices. For two years, he was leading man with Great Yarmouth Repertory Company and was a member of the quartet, The Regal Four.
Adams was hired by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a chorister in 1951 and soon began to play the smaller roles of Bill Bobstay in H.M.S. Pinafore, Samuel in The Pirates of Penzance, Second Yeoman in The Yeomen of the Guard, and Antonio in The Gondoliers, eventually understudying 26 roles. The next season, Adams took over the principal role of Captain Corcoran in H.M.S. Pinafore and filled in for the ailing Alan Styler as Cox in Cox and Box, the Counsel in Trial by Jury, and Archibald Grosvenor in Patience. He also gave one performance as Old Adam Goodheart in Ruddigore and soon began to appear as the Lieutenant of the Tower in The Yeomen of the Guard.
Beginning in the 1952–53 season, Adams began to fill in for the aging Darrell Fancourt, who missed an increasing number of performances, as the Pirate King in Pirates, Colonel Calverley in Patience, the Earl of Mountararat in Iolanthe, the Mikado of Japan in The Mikado, and Sir Roderic Murgatroyd in Ruddigore. With Fancourt's retirement at the end of that season, Adams took over those roles, as well as the roles of Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore, Sergeant Meryll in The Yeomen of the Guard, and Arac in Princess Ida (when that opera was revived in 1954). He also played Sergeant Bouncer in Cox and Box from 1961 through 1963.
Adams continued as the principal bass of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company until 1969. He married D'Oyly Carte soprano Muriel Harding in 1952. She died in 1990.
[edit] After D'Oyly Carte
Adams began to perform full-time with Gilbert & Sullivan for All, a company that he, Norman Meadmore and Thomas Round had founded several years earlier. That company toured the British Isles, North America, Australasia, and the Far East. Adams appeared with this company as Cox in Cox and Box, the Usher in Trial by Jury, Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore, the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, Lord Mountararat in Iolanthe, the Mikado in The Mikado, Sir Roderic in Ruddigore, Sergeant Meryll in The Yeomen of the Guard, and Don Alhambra in The Gondoliers, as well as acting as a director for the company.
During his Gilbert & Sullivan for All years, Adams also appeared as W. S. Gilbert on tour with Thomas Round in Tarantara! Tarantara!, Ian Taylor's musical about the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, and, again with Round, recorded a musical documentary, The Story of Gilbert & Sullivan, written by Dr. Thomas Heric. In 1982, he appeared in three of the Brent Walker G&S television productions as Sir Marmaduke in The Sorcerer, Colonel Calverley in Patience, and Sir Roderic in Ruddigore.
Beginning in the early 1980s, Adams began to perform other operettas and grand opera. After singing Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady for Scottish Opera and the Mikado in the Peter Sellers' version of The Mikado in Chicago in 1983, he appeared in The Merry Widow and Lulu, before making his Covent Garden, debut later that year as a Frontier Guard in Boris Godunov. He sang with English National Opera many times, beginning in 1985, and at the Glyndebourne Festival beginning in 1988. He sang roles in Amsterdam, Geneva, Los Angeles, Toronto, and San Francisco, as well as returning to Covent Garden. He also continued to record, especially with Charles Mackerras and Welsh National Opera and appeared as Sergeant Meryll in the Welsh National Opera production of Yeomen 1994-95.
The month before his death, in April 1996, he appeared in ENO's revival of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, and he had been scheduled to perform in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the fall of 1996.
Adams also composed and arranged music.
[edit] Recordings
Adams recorded prolifically. With the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Decca Records, he recorded Sergeant Bouncer in Cox and Box (1961), the Usher in Trial by Jury (1964), the Notary in The Sorcerer (1953), Sir Marmaduke in The Sorcerer (1966), Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore (1960), the Pirate King in Pirates (1958 and 1968), Colonel Calverley in Patience (1961), Mountararat in Iolanthe (1960), Arac in Princess Ida (1955 and 1965), the Mikado in The Mikado (1958), Sir Roderic in Ruddigore (1962), Sergeant Meryll in Yeomen (1964), and King Paramount in Utopia Limited (1964 excerpts). He also appeared in the title role in D'Oyly Carte's 1966 film of The Mikado and as the voice of Sir Roderic Murgatroyd in the Halas & Batchelor cartoon version of Ruddigore.
Adams was one of several D'Oyly Carte artists to appear on a Reader's Digest LP collection, "The Best of Gilbert & Sullivan," in 1963. Because he was prohibited by contract from recording the roles he had played with D'Oyly Carte, Adams recorded, for Reader's Digest, excerpts as Ko-Ko in The Mikado, the Sergeant of Police in Pirates, Private Willis in Iolanthe, Don Alhambra in The Gondoliers, and Reginald Bunthorne and Major Murgatroyd in Patience.
In the 1970s, Adams also recorded his roles with Gilbert & Sullivan for All. These were complete recordings of Trial by Jury and Cox and Box, and potted excerpts (as much as would fit on two sides of an LP record) of seven others. He also made two recordings of lesser known Sullivan music.
With Charles Mackerras and Welsh National Opera's Gilbert & Sullivan series, begun in 1992, Adams recorded the title role in The Mikado, the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore, and Sergeant Meryll in The Yeomen of the Guard.
[edit] References
- Ayre, Leslie (1972). The Gilbert & Sullivan Companion. London: W.H. Allen & Co Ltd. Introduction by Martyn Green.
[edit] External links
- Donald Adams at Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte
- Profile of Adams
