My buddy David Edwards, who has died aged 86, was a distinguished determine within the novice music scene in and round Tub for greater than half a century. Within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s, he was the driving pressure behind Tub Opera.
Though he was a amount surveyor by occupation, his life revolved round music. Blessed with a superb tenor voice, he first appeared as a soloist in The Messiah on the age of 17 and, for a few years, continued a busy spherical of oratorio and opera performances.
In 1977, David and his second spouse, Jill (nee Fowles), whom he had met once they had been each members of the BBC West of England Singers and of the Tub Opera Group, and married within the late 70s, established Tub Opera, which introduced itself with a manufacturing of Verdi’s Macbeth, with Jill as Girl Macbeth and David as Macduff.
For the primary 10 years or so of the corporate’s existence, David was its chairman. From the beginning, the couple created a household environment inside the group, the place refrain members and principals had been equally valued. They had been devoted to enhancing requirements, and beneficiant to a fault. The music room of the household dwelling was at all times out there for rehearsals, and after-show events occurred of their backyard.
For years, David took on the main tenor roles, culminating, in 1993, in one in every of his biggest achievements, the title position in Peter Grimes.
David additionally carried out with the Devizes-based White Horse Opera; with Operaletta, a bunch centered on fashionable one-act operas; and at Shawford Opera, primarily based at Shawford Mill, close to the village of Rode, south of Tub, the place his final look, round 1997, was as Bardolph in Verdi’s Falstaff, supporting Andrew Shore within the title position.
By no means one to look again with remorse, as soon as David determined that his days as a number one tenor had been over, he slipped with out fuss into the refrain, filling minor tenor roles as and when required. His assist for and encouragement of Tub Opera by no means wavered. A person of nice urbanity and allure, he had the flexibility to have interaction with all he met and to deal with everybody as an equal.
Born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, one in every of 5 youngsters of Doris and Frank Edwards, a gardener, after attending Chippenham secondary fashionable college, David went to Tub Technical School, the place he studied amount surveying. He did nationwide service within the RAF and was posted to RAF Locking close to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset.
His first job was with the Chippenham agency of Downing, Rudman and Bent; he then moved to Blackford and Son, in Calne, earlier than he and his buddy Roland Turner established the constructing agency of FR Turner, which he ran for greater than three many years.
In 1962, David married Bunty Walton; they divorced within the early 70s.
He’s survived by Sarah Kate and Lisa, the 2 daughters from his first marriage, a stepdaughter, Sarah Jane, from Jill’s first marriage, and two grandsons. Jill died in 2002 and a stepson, Charlie, died in 2019.
