The Welsh tenor Ryland Davies, who has died aged 80, was noted for most of his career as a golden-toned singer of Mozart, Rossini and the lighter Donizetti roles, though latterly of more colourful character parts.
He had had no musical training before he went to the Royal Manchester College of Music (now the RNCM) at the age of 17, but the quality of his voice, and in particular his phrasing, was noticed by his teacher Frederic Cox. By the time he entered the Glyndebourne chorus two years later, he had learned the rudiments: “I could read my treble clef and I could follow the conductor.”
Almost immediately he was summoned back to his native south Wales to make his debut, in 1964, as Almaviva in The Barber of Seville at Welsh National Opera. He continued to sing in the Glyndebourne chorus until 1966 and returned to sing regularly there in future years, where his roles included Nemorino (L’Elisir d’Amore), Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Ferrando (Così Fan Tutte), Lensky (Eugene Onegin), Lysander (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Don Basilio (Le Nozze di Figaro).
In all these roles he impressed with the sweetness and Italianate quality of his light voice, his effortless projection and mellifluous legato. His first Ferrando was with Scottish Opera in 1969, by which time his physique was enhanced by what he called “early-success-girth”, skilfully camouflaged in the Turkish bath scene in Anthony Besch’s staging. With Elizabeth Harwood and Janet Baker as the sisters, the production was a triumph that marked a turning point in his career.
He then sang the role in Italian for the first time at Glyndebourne in the same year and made his Covent Garden debut, also in 1969, as Hylas, the homesick young sailor in Les Troyens, followed in quick succession by Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Fenton (Falstaff), Ferrando and Almaviva. In 1970 he appeared at the Salzburg festival as Cassio in Verdi’s Otello and also made his US debut at San Francisco, again as Ferrando, the start of his collaboration with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. It was as Ferrando, too, that he made his debuts at the Paris Opera (1974) and the Metropolitan (1975).
The latter Così also marked the Metropolitan debut, in the role of Dorabella, of Anne Howells, whom he had married in 1966. That relationship ended in a divorce in 1981, to which, together with the stress of his burgeoning career, Davies attributed the vocal breakdown that occurred in the early 1980s. With the help of a former college friend, now teacher, Patrick McGuigan, he managed to recover his technique in 1985–86, but it then took another five years before his career was fully on track again.
Appearances as Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus at English National Opera (1986) and in the title role of Weber’s Oberon at Montpellier and at the Châtelet (1987) were among the first signs of that recuperation. By 1994 he realised he needed to cut back on the teaching he had meanwhile undertaken with the RNCM in 1987. He resigned from that institution in 1994, but continued to teach at the Royal College of Music (1989–2009) and later at the Royal Academy.
Returning to Glyndebourne in 1988 as Tichon in Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová, he was pleased to be able to put his new-found vocal strength to good use playing, in Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production, a weak character who is nevertheless of dramatic significance.
He was less happy as Jeník in The Bartered Bride, which did not suit his voice so well. Also in the cast was Stafford Dean, now married to Howells; Davies himself was remarried to the soprano Deborah Rees. Any tension that there might have been between the two men was masked by their good-natured aping of Jani Strasser (the one-time musical director of Glyndebourne) and the conductor John Pritchard, as they had done when choristers together for the company.
At this time too he began to take on more character roles, such as the Rev Horace Adams in Peter Grimes, Don Basilio in Le Nozze di Figaro and the Duke in Massenet’s Chérubin, playing with relish the “fussy-arsed little chap” who bosses everybody around. The latter role saw his return to Covent Garden in 1994, the same year in which he returned to Cardiff to sing the Podestà in La Finta Giardiniera.
Born in Cwm, Ebbw Vale, to Gethin Davies, a steelworker, and his wife Joan (nee Baker), he gained his first review in Opera magazine in 1963, while still a student in Manchester, in one of the title roles of Gluck’s Paride ed Elena: “His Paris, though well sung, was disadvantaged by a blond Beatle wig that gave him an unromantic resemblance to Harpo Marx.”
While singing with the Glyndebourne chorus his first solo role was as the Major Domo to the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. The most memorable evening of the run was the one on which Montserrat Caballé, the Marschallin, turned to him and demanded a cognac.
Exiting stage left, he was met by an alarmed stage assistant, who was dispatched to the Long Bar to fetch one. Returning to the stage, he delivered the cognac to Caballé with the words “Ecco, Signora!” Whispering “Grazie, grazie!”, she turned her back on the audience, drained the glass and continued in her role: “Abtreten die Leut!” (“Send everyone away.”)
In tandem with his operatic career he maintained a distinguished profile at home and abroad with solo roles in a wide range of oratorios and other sacred works, including Bach’s B minor Mass, St John in Elgar’s The Kingdom, Haydn’s Nelson Mass and The Seasons, Obadiah in Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time.
In his youth he was a keen rugby player and gained a schoolboys’ international cap for Wales against England and Scotland (1957–58) at the age of 14.
Both at the British conservatoires at which he taught and at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid, he was a kind and devoted teacher – his most notable students included Ian Bostridge, Jacques Imbrailo, David Butt Philip, Andrew Staples and Sam Furness.
He is survived by Deborah and their daughter, Emily.
• Ryland Davies, tenor, born 9 February 1943; died 5 November 2023
