John Cameron (singer)

John Ewen Cameron (20 March 1918 – 29 March 2002) was an Australian baritone singer, who made most of his career in Britain. He became known for his portrayal of characters in modern operas by composers from Australia, Britain and continental Europe, and for his recordings with conductors such as Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Adrian Boult, the young Colin Davis, and particularly Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Following early concert and operatic experience in Australia he moved to Britain in 1949. He soon was engaged at Covent Garden, where he sang smaller, and some substantial, roles for three seasons. He next sang at Glyndebourne. Over the next 25 years Cameron pursued a career, in both Britain and Australia, in which concert work and recordings played as great a part as opera. From 1976 until the last months of his life Cameron was a teacher on the staff of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

Cameron was born in Coolamon, New South Wales. He was in the Second Australian Imperial Force during the Second World War, serving in the Middle East. He sang in troop concerts, and on returning to Australia after the war he decided to pursue a professional career. He studied at the New South Wales State Conservatorium in Sydney, and by the late 1940s he was performing in the concert hall, and in opera, including Il trovatore in 1947. In 1948 after a nationwide singing competition Cameron and a fellow prize-winner, Joan Sutherland, sang under the baton of Eugene Goossens at a concert in Sydney. With Goossens's encouragement, Cameron moved to Britain in 1949.

The Covent Garden Opera Company, founded three years earlier, engaged Cameron on Goossens's recommendation. He made his debut playing the Jesuit emissary Rangoni in Boris Godunov in November 1949. He played minor parts for the company in Lohengrin, Tosca, Carmen and Parsifal, and created roles in the premieres of The Pilgrim's Progress and Billy Budd. His two most substantial parts for the company were Germont senior in La traviata and the Speaker of the Temple in The Magic Flute. After the end of his three-year contract with Covent Garden, Cameron was engaged by the Glyndebourne Festival to sing Arbace in Mozart's Idomeneo and in two roles in Gluck's Alceste.

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