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John Dobson, tenor who specialised in ‘comprimario’ roles, supporting the lead singers – obituary

John Dobson as Spalanzani, with Sumi Jo as Olympia, in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann at Covent Garden in 1991 - Donald Cooper/Alamy
John Dobson as Spalanzani, with Sumi Jo as Olympia, in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann at Covent Garden in 1991 - Donald Cooper/Alamy

John Dobson, who has died aged 92, was a comprimario tenor and a splendid actor who created supporting roles in the world premieres of two of Michael Tippett’s operas: Paris, the second son of Priam, in King Priam at the 1962 Coventry Festival directed by Sam Wanamaker; and Luke, a hospital intern, in The Ice Break at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1977.

He also appeared as the Doctor in the British premiere of Luciano Berio’s Un Re in Ascolto in 1989, again at Covent Garden.

Dobson described the comprimario as a role that applies only to surgeons and singers. “You have an assistant surgeon who is the chirurgo comprimario, and the assistant singer who is alongside the first and helps in the work,” he explained to Opera magazine.

One profile told of him regularly playing “fourth esquire, first priest, naked youth, evil dwarf,” adding that “the comprimario sings those supporting parts, often tiny, that when delivered with real artistry can strengthen or even lift the whole drama.”

Such roles, the singer added, were largely anonymous. “Think of all the actors on television who’ve done 150 films, they’re always there and you know the faces but you can’t put names to them; they’re my kind of people,” he told The Guardian in 1984. On another occasion he told Sue MacGregor in Conversation Piece on Radio 4 that his job was to make the lead singer look better, like the setting for a beautiful diamond.

Yet even among second fiddles there are first ranks, and Dobson was one of them. In a performing career that began in the Glyndebourne chorus of 1950 and continued for more than five decades, he was a stalwart of the opera stage, notably at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Having shared a debut there with the conductor Georg Solti on October 1 1959, he went on to sing more than 2,000 performances in 100 different roles, including the aggressive fisherman Bob Boles in Britten’s Peter Grimes, the treacherous courtier Prince Shuisky in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and the short-tempered Dr Caius in Verdi’s Falstaff.

His operatic longevity brought not only experience but also the opportunity to make mischief. He sang the spy Spoletta in Puccini’s Tosca with at least eight different Scarpias, including Sir Geraint Evans, Peter Glossop and Tito Gobbi, the latter in Franco Zeffirelli’s famous production with Maria Callas. “Tito asked me if I had any ideas, so with an absolutely straight face I said, ‘I see Spoletta as a homosexual who’s in love with Scarpia’,” he recalled. “He didn’t come near me for two days.”

In an unusual footnote in operatic history Dobson was the first tenor to perform in German at English National Opera, when in February 1976 an outbreak of flu laid low the company’s Mime in Wagner’s Siegfried. Dobson was released by the Royal Opera House but, according to a pre-performance announcement, “naturally only sings the role in German”. The announcer continued to audience laughter: “Because of the musical complexity of the exchanges between Mime and Siegfried and Mime and Albrecht, those characters will also sing these sections of the opera in German.”

He later sang the role in English, explaining how he noticed a difference in the audience’s reaction. “They are immediately in the situation: they don’t have to do any kind of mental translation,” he said. “It’s very exciting to do it in English, and it’s very exciting to do it in German – to the two different kinds of audience.”

Despite occasional ventures elsewhere, Dobson remained a stalwart of the Royal Opera, and at the time of his official retirement in 1996 the journalist Norman Lebrecht wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “He never played the hero and rarely earned a rave, but it is the solid Dobsons rather than the starry [Placido] Domingos who make or break an opera house.”

Mervyn Frederick John Dobson was born in Derby on November 17 1930, the son of Mervyn Dobson, a car mechanic, and his wife Mary (née McGuire), who had great hopes for her son. “My mother always wanted an operatic tenor, and when I was born she was convinced she had one,” he said. Comprimario “certainly wasn’t what she saved her pennies for”.

He was educated at Derby School before studying as a baritone with Norman Walker at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. From there he took lessons in Milan with the baritone Giovanni Inghilleri, who had been performing since 1919 and who turned his pupil into a tenor.

Otto Klemperer, centre, with cast members for his 1961 production of Fidelio: Sena Jurinac, left, Jon Vickers, Dobson and Elsie Morison - Davies/Getty Images
Otto Klemperer, centre, with cast members for his 1961 production of Fidelio: Sena Jurinac, left, Jon Vickers, Dobson and Elsie Morison - Davies/Getty Images

His 1956 debut as Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at Bergamo Opera, billed as Giovanni Dobson, was followed by appearances as Alfredo in La traviata and Rodolfo in La bohème. Back in Britain, however, there was very little opera, although he did sing Pinkerton for a BBC television Butterfly in July 1957 when the part was acted by David Peel as a crew-cut sophomore.

He did a couple of Christmas pantomime seasons with the comedian Cyril Fletcher and several summer shows in seaside resorts, starting with one at Bognor Regis with Clive Dunn. “It was the most wonderful training – quick changes, make-up, everything – on a little theatre on the esplanade for 13 weeks,” he recalled.

His ambition was to be a leading lyric tenor at Covent Garden but, as he explained, “I blew it.” The company, he recalled, had given him a couple of performances in Manchester as Pinkerton: “But, let’s be honest, they weren’t really very good.”

Gradually he found musical fulfilment as the supporting player, and among his earliest roles was the Major-Domo in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, which he sang at Glyndebourne with Elisabeth Söderström and Régine Crespin in May 1959 and at Covent Garden with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Sena Jurinac in December that year.

In time he came to embrace the comprimario. Instead of living out of a suitcase in hotel rooms like the great stars, he could commute from his own home, a small black-and-white cottage in a quiet green close on a hill overlooking Purley in Surrey. “I like being in my garden, I like my little allotment up the road where I grow fruit and vegetables, and after a day at the Opera House, I just want to sit quietly, have a glass of wine and watch the telly,” he said.

He was also passionately fond of the Old Vic “because you could see so well”. While travelling to or from work he was careful to watch people on the Underground or in the street, observing how they walk, which part of the body moves quickly or slowly.

Despite officially taking his final bow in 1996, Dobson came out of retirement on several occasions. One such was a gala at Covent Garden in 2002 to mark Bernard Haitink’s retirement as music director of the Royal Opera, when he sang the tiny role of Moser in the final scene of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger.

John Dobson was appointed OBE in 1985. His first marriage, in 1964, to Betty Kavanagh, a former dancer with the Royal Ballet whom he met in the wings when she was an extra in Macbeth, was dissolved in 1988. Three years ago he married Deirdre Tilley, who survives him.

John Dobson, born November 17 1930, died May 14 2023