Post-war Career
For a while, he was in Bernard Delfont's production of Gay Rosalinda at the Palace Theatre, in London, under the musical direction of Richard Tauber. He later worked for Delfont again in a show in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight.
A chance meeting with Henry Robinson, formerly stage manager at Sadler's Wells, resulted in Evans applying for an audition with the newly formed Covent Garden Opera Company. Singing "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca and the "Flower Song" from Carmen, he was chosen from scores of tenor hopefuls from around the world and progressed successfully through three auditions to receive the offer of a contract from the Administrator, David Webster, in the middle of August 1946.
His first roles were as the Bird God and Lover in Purcell's The Faerie Queene in a cast that included Michael Hordern, Constance Shacklock, Margot Fonteyn and Moira Shearer. He made his Covent Garden debut, deputising for Heddle Nash, as Des Grieux in Manon, under the direction of Reginald Goodall.
He became one of the first British singers to sing in opera abroad after the War when Erich Kleiber took him to sing in Wagner's Ring in Rome, with the Rome Opera. Later, he was the tenor soloist in Beethoven's Choral Symphony when Kleiber conducted the work at Covent Garden at a concert to help establish an artists' pension fund.
Read more about this topic: Edgar Evans (tenor)
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