Norman Bailey

Norman Bailey was born in Birmingham in March 1933 and educated at the Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, before completing his vocal training at the Vienna Music Academy under Adolf Vogel, Julius Patzak and Josef Witt. He made his début at the Vienna Chamber Opera in 1959, and joined the Linz Provincial Theatre and subsequently the Wuppertal Opera through the early 1960s in the standard German bass-baritone repertoire.

He returned to England in 1967 to join Sadler’s Wells Opera (later English National Opera), where the Wagner roles became the centre of his international reputation — Hans Sachs in *Die Meistersinger*, the Wanderer in *Siegfried*, and Wotan and Gunther in the company’s first complete English-language *Ring* under Reginald Goodall through the early 1970s. He made his Bayreuth début as Amfortas in 1969 and sang Sachs at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala and the Paris Opéra. Outside Wagner he was particularly associated with Verdi’s Falstaff and Iago, and gave the world premiere of Penderecki’s *Paradise Lost* in Chicago in 1978.

Bailey was appointed CBE in 1977. He continued to perform into his seventies and died in February 2021. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his Wagner work at Sadler’s Wells and his recital appearances across the 1960s and 1970s.