Sir Geraint Llewellyn EvansCBE (16 February 1922 – 19 September 1992) was a Welshbass-baritone noted for operatic roles including Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, and the title role in Wozzeck. Evans was especially acclaimed for his performances in the title role of Verdi's Falstaff. He sang more than 70 different roles in a career that lasted from his first appearance at Covent Garden in 1948 to his farewell there in 1984.
Early life
Evans was born in Cilfynydd, the only son of William John Evans (1899–1978), a coal miner, and his wife, Charlotte May, née Thomas (1901–1923). His family was Welsh speaking, and Evans spoke Welsh before he learned English.[1]
On leaving school, aged 14, he worked as a window dresser for the High Class Ladies' Wear store in Pontypridd.[2] He took singing lessons in Cardiff from Idloes Owen, who went on to found the Welsh National Opera, and sang with a local Methodist choir and the local amateur dramatic society. 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.[1]
During a career that lasted from his first appearance at Covent Garden in January 1948 to his farewell at the same house in June 1984, Evans played over 70 roles.[5] He made his operatic début as the nightwatchman in Die Meistersinger at the Royal Opera House in 1948 and performed there as Figaro in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in 1949, a part which he sang more than 500 times during his international career.[1] It was as Figaro that he made his début at La Scala, Milan in 1960, the first British singer to appear there since the war.[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."[5][7]
At the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1957, he first played the part with which he became internationally associated: the title role in Verdi's Falstaff,[8] which he later played in opera houses around the world, including Covent Garden (1961, directed and designed by Franco Zeffirelli), the Vienna Staatsoper and the Metropolitan Opera (1964 in another Zeffirelli production). Other roles in which he was celebrated were Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, Figaro, Don Pizarro in Fidelio, the title role in Don Pasquale, Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore and Leporello in Don Giovanni. He was an outstanding actor in both comic and tragic roles such as Wozzeck.[9]
Evans's repertoire was in the bass-baritone range such as Don Pizarro, and in Mozart he chose the lower roles - Leporello rather than Don Giovanni, Figaro rather than the Count. Roles higher in the baritone register were not comfortable for him: he never undertook Iago in Otello and his one attempt at the title role in Rigoletto, at Covent Garden in 1964, ended in disaster when his voice failed on the first night, on which occasion he took the unusual step of apologising to the audience at the final curtain.[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). In Billy Budd, Britten wrote much of the title part with Evans in mind, but the singer, after preparing the role, found that it lay uncomfortably high for him and opted for the lesser role of Mr Flint, the Sailing Master.[11] Later in his career, Evans switched to the bass role of the evil John Claggart, Master at Arms.[12]
Recordings and television
Geraint Evans's studio recordings include Falstaff (conducted by Georg Solti); Mozart's Figaro (for both Otto Klemperer and Daniel Barenboim); Guglielmo in Così fan tutte (Klemperer); Ned Keene in Peter Grimes (conducted by the composer); Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger (conducted by Herbert von Karajan); Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore (conducted by John Pritchard); Wozzeck (conducted by Karl Böhm).
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.[13]
Peter Ustinov, who directed Evans in opera, wrote of him:
His great qualities are a permanent commentary on all that make opera inviting, and finally impossible, to someone trained in the theatre. With his fine eighteenth-century face, looking like many of the actors' portraits in the Garrick club, dark eyes, bulbous nose and chubby cheeks, on the small side, bristling with invention, ferociously energetic, helpful, greedy, understanding, and unscrupulous, he knows from the outset what he intends to do, usually because he has already done it successfully, and rehearsals are spent getting his own way by running the whole gamut of techniques, from charm to bluster and back again.[14]
The critic Peter Conrad commented on Evans's "physiognomic intelligence...His characterisations were built from the shoes up - his Claggart in Billy Budd minced; his Wozzeck plodded; his Beckmesser scurried like an officious beetle; his Falstaff had a pigeon-toed waddle."[15]
After his retirement from the operatic stage in 1984 (his farewell performances were as Dulcamara), he continued to work as an operatic stage director. 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. A paperback edition was published the following year.[18]
^ abcdGoodwin, Noël: "Evans, Sir Geraint Llewellyn (1922–1992)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 14 Dec 2008
^The Observer, 26 May 1968, p. 26; The Guardian, 8 May 1973, p. 26; 15 May 1973, p. 2; 22 May 1973, p. 2; 18 September 1974, p. 2; 7 November 1981, p. 16; 14 November 1981, p. 16; 21 November 1981, p. 18; 29 November 1981, p. 44
