British tenor Gerald English, who spent much of his career in Australia, has died aged 93 in the United Kingdom, where he spent the last years of his life. The tenor, whom Australian composer and broadcaster Andrew Ford described in his book The Memory of Music as possessing “a gloriously clear tone and the best diction I have ever heard from a classical singer,” was born in 1925. He spent World War II working in military intelligence before studying at the Royal College of Music in London. He made his opera debut in 1956 as Peter Quint in Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw for the English Opera Group and went on to perform and record extensively, including at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, La Scala and all around the world, serving as a professor at RCM from 1960. Over his long career, English performed in concert with conductors from Stravinsky and Berio to Britten and Boulanger.

Gerald English as Sigmund Freud in Andrew Ford’s Night and Dreams

English also performed extensively in Australia, where he became a resident in the late 70s. He performed in Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck at the 1976 Adelaide Festival...