Jon Vickers

Jon Vickers was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in October 1926, into a Pentecostal family, and trained at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto under George Lambert. He worked through the early 1950s as a soloist in Canadian church and concert settings before making his Royal Opera House Covent Garden début in 1957 as Riccardo in *Un ballo in maschera*.

He emerged as one of the leading dramatic tenors of the international operatic stage from the late 1950s through the 1980s. His central repertoire was the heroic dramatic tenor roles — Florestan in *Fidelio*, Aeneas in *Les Troyens*, the title role in *Peter Grimes* (which he sang at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan and across the international circuit, and recorded definitively under Colin Davis), Don José in *Carmen*, Otello, Tristan, Siegmund, Parsifal, the title role in Boito’s *Mefistofele*, Captain Vere in *Billy Budd*, and Samson in *Samson et Dalila*. He sang at Bayreuth (from 1958), the Metropolitan Opera (from 1960), the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, the Salzburg Festival and the Paris Opéra. He was famous for his selective approach to repertoire (he refused to sing Tannhäuser on moral grounds), his theological seriousness on stage, and his unusually intense vocal and dramatic engagement with the roles he took on.

Vickers was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1968 and Companion of Honour in 1988. He died in Ontario in July 2015. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his dramatic tenor work from the 1960s and 1970s.