Donald Adams - Beginnings and D'Oyly Carte Years

Beginnings and D'Oyly Carte Years

Donald Adams was born in Bristol and educated at the Bristol Cathedral School, where he sang as a chorister in the cathedral and played Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral at the age of sixteen. While still at school, he made his first professional appearance as an actor in 1944 with the BBC Repertory Company. He studied with an Italian singing teacher in London, Rodolfo Melle (who had sung at La Scala with the great tenor Aureliano Pertile), who taught Adams to sustain the vowels of a word before reaching the consonants. This, Adams said, gave the voice "a nice line", and he continued to practise Melle's lessons until the end of his life.

Adams interrupted his fledgling stage and radio career to serve in the British Army, where he acted as resident producer of the Army Repertory Theatre at Catterick Camp. After his national service, he returned to acting and music-hall performances, gaining good notices. For two years, he was leading man with Great Yarmouth Repertory Company and was a member of the quartet, The Regal Four. He also appeared in pantomime at the Euston Theatre in King’s Cross. Kitty McShane asked Adams to go on tour with her and Arthur Lucan (Kitty and Old Mother Riley), during which Lucan suggested that Adams combine his singing and acting and audition for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Adams was hired by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a chorister in 1951 and soon began to play the small roles of Bill Bobstay in H.M.S. Pinafore, Samuel in The Pirates of Penzance, Second Yeoman in The Yeomen of the Guard, and Antonio in The Gondoliers, eventually understudying 26 roles. The next season, he took over the principal role of Captain Corcoran in H.M.S. Pinafore and substituted for the ailing Alan Styler as Cox in Cox and Box, the Counsel in Trial by Jury and Grosvenor in Patience. He also appeared once as Old Adam Goodheart in Ruddigore and soon began to play the Lieutenant of the Tower in The Yeomen of the Guard. Adams also began to fill in for the ageing Darrell Fancourt, who missed an increasing number of performances, as the Pirate King in Pirates, Colonel Calverley in Patience, the Earl of Mountararat in Iolanthe, the title role in The Mikado, and Sir Roderic Murgatroyd in Ruddigore.

When Fancourt retired at the end of the 1952–53 season, Adams became the company's principal bass-baritone, regularly playing Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore, the Pirate King, Colonel Calverly, Mountararat, the Mikado of Japan, Sir Roderic in Ruddigore, Sergeant Meryll in The Yeomen of the Guard, and Arac in Princess Ida (when that opera was revived in 1954). From 1961 to 1963, he also played Sergeant Bouncer in Cox and Box. Although he had admired Fancourt, when he took over the roles, Adams asked Bridget D'Oyly Carte if he could create his own characterizations, which she agreed to, saying she would tell him if he overstepped the mark. Adams continued as the principal bass-baritone of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company until 1969. In 1952 he married D'Oyly Carte soprano Muriel Harding (1920–90).