Peter Dawson (bass-baritone)

Peter Dawson ( born January 31, 1882 in Adelaide, † September 26, 1961 in Sydney, pseudonyms, among others, Leonard Dawson, Hector Grant and Phil Strong) was an Australian singer in the vocal range bass-baritone.

Life

Peter Dawson was the youngest of six children in the family of a Scottish immigrant to the world, who had built a metal factory after the end of his career as captain. After taking singing lessons with a music teacher named CJ Stevens in Adelaide, won Dawson, who was active at this time as a boxer, with a bass solo a singing competition in the Australian Ballarat. This helped him to his father, who had provided him for a career in the metal industry, to convince them instead to send him to study singing to England.

In London, Dawson was a student of baritone Charles Santley 1902, after this, as sung to the tradition, the aria " O Ruddier than the Cherry " from Georg Friedrich Handel's masque Acis and Galatea. The piece was, as later Waltzing Matilda and The Floral Dance to Dawson's business card.

His concert debut in 1903 with Dawson Emma Albani at the Guildhall in Plymouth. A year later he made as " Leonard Dawson " with the ballad To My First Love his first recording on wax cylinder. The first record Navajo (also Navahoe ) followed in the same year. 1907 and 1909 embodied Dawson at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the role of the night watchman in Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger.

In World War Dawson served as a volunteer at the Australian troops in World War II, he helped too old for military service, in the factory of his family. As a singer, lived and worked mainly in England Dawson. In 1956, he ended his career and returned to his native Australia.

Work

Although Peter Dawson was also successful as an opera singer, but his real specialty was the concert singing and the record. The opera means " too much work for too little pay " ( "too much work for too little pay" ), he is said to have uttered. In addition, he felt as " folk singers " ( "singer of the people" ). So he took an estimated 3000 records on, the majority of songs, but also arias from oratorios and operas, which he always lectured in the English version. His trademark powerful bass baritone, which he held until about his 70th year out, were flawless diction and technique.

His first recordings released Peter Dawson at up to 20 pseudonyms, which he then assigned to individual sub- genres. So he sang Scottish folk songs as Hector Grant, light music as Phil Strong. Other artists names were Geoffrey Baxter, Charles Handy, Charles Stander, Robert Woodville, Will Strong, Frank Danby, Peter Allison, Denton Thomas, Charles Webber, Gilbert Mundy, Arnold Flint and JP McColl.

Modern Discography

• A Green and Pleasant land. Peter Dawson Sings Traditional Favourites ( Pearl Pavilion Records 1988)
• The Connoisseur 's Peter Dawson (Pearl Pavilion Records 1998)
• Peter Dawson: The Ultimate Collection ( Prism Leisure Corporation 1999 )