Peter Pears: a snapshot
The English tenor Peter Pears was born in Farnham on 22 June 1910 and began to develop his singing and acting talents during his school days at Lancing College. After an abortive year at Oxford he began his professional career with the BBC Singers in 1934. In 1937 he met the composer Benjamin Britten and they embarked on a personal and creative relationship that was be lifelong. Pears and Britten shared three years in America from Spring 1939 before returning home in 1942. Pears at once began to develop his career as a soloist, making his operatic debut in The Tales of Hoffman before going on to create the title role in Britten's Peter Grimes in 1945.
For the following three decades Pears was a key source of inspiration for Britten’s music and an essential vehicle for the composer's vocal and operatic writing. Britten regarded him as the ‘greatest artist that ever was’, and dedicated several works to him, including Death in Venice, his operatic swansong, in which Pears created the role of Aschenbach. Pears also pursued an independent career, making a name in Lieder, English song and oratorio, and especially as the evangelist in Bach’s Passions. His other important contributions to British musical life included teaching, commissioning new music and collaborating with Britten and others in the founding of the English Opera Group and the establishment of the Aldeburgh Festival and, in 1972, the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies.
Pears’s singing career continued for four years after Britten’s death in 1976. Following a stroke in December 1980, he continued to dedicate much of his time and creative energy to the life of the Britten-Pears School, and died in Aldeburgh on 3 April 1986.