Robert Tear died on Tuesday morning, March 29, aged 72. Born in Glamorgan, Wales, he was one of the leading tenors to emerge in a golden age of British singers. Throughout his long and distinguished career he specialised in the music of Benjamin Britten, working with the composer throughout the 1960s and creating roles in The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son.

It is primarily through Britten that audiences in Sydney and Melbourne came to know Tear – he played the regret-ravaged Captain Vere in the 1999 premiere of Neil Armfield’s award-winning Billy Budd, which also opened at the Welsh National Opera the previous year. Moffatt Oxenbould, the artistic director of Opera Australia at the time, remembers how “Bob Tear fitted into the family ensemble of the Company from the outset” and was “welcomed for his mastery and undoubted authority in the Britten repertoire.”

“He had impeccable diction and no-nonsense positive energy in the rehearsal room”, Oxenbould recalls.

“Offstage he was a marvellous companion. He had the facility to talk confidently on almost any subject – usually his conversation was laced with a healthy dose of irreverence and whimsical eccentricity. He lives on in the memories...