| Biography | The talent of William McAlpine, who became one of Britain's leading tenors in the 1950s and 60s, and who has died aged 81, was discovered in an unusual fashion - when he was heard singing his heart out on a building site in London in 1943.
Born into a working-class family in Stenhousemuir, Stirlingshire, McAlpine left Larbert high school at the age of 16. Having failed his RAF medical, he became an apprentice bricklayer and moved to London. A woman in a flat opposite the building site on which he was singing insisted on taking him to the former baritone Roy Henderson, who had taught Kathleen Ferrier.
Initially, McAlpine was trained by Henderson as a baritone, but when he sent the young singer to Walter Hyde, an eminent tenor of the past, it was decided that McAlpine was himself a tenor. Further sessions from another tenor, Joseph Hislop, a singing adviser to Covent Garden, set him on his way.
In 1952, McAlpine was offered a contract as a principal with the Royal Opera House. I recall hearing him that year as Andres, in the first British performances of Berg's Wozzeck. His voice struck me at once as having a particularly attractive, plangent character, which went with a sympathetic stage personality.
For the next four seasons at Covent Garden, he played cameo roles, in each of which he made his mark - most notably as Jaquino in Fidelio (his own favourite opera), as the Idiot in Boris Godunov (1953), and as the Spirit of the Masque in the premiere of Britten's Gloriana.
Soon, he was invited to sing major parts with Sadler's Wells Opera, making his debut as Alfredo in La Traviata (1955), followed by Rodolfo in La Bohème. He sang regularly with the company until 1965. Among his most notable roles were Lensky in Eugene Onegin, and Hermann in The Queen Of Spades. By this time, his voice had taken on a more dramatic quality, and his poignant timbre suited these tortured souls very well. In 1960, he was back at Covent Garden singing Alfredo to Sutherland's Violetta, and the title part in The Tales Of Hoffmann, another part that fitted his voice like a glove.
He made his Glyndebourne debut as Idamante, in Idomeneo (1956), added the Italian Tenor, in Der Rosenkavalier (1959), and the strenuous part of Bacchus, in Ariadne Auf Naxos (1962). He was also sought after by what was then the City Opera in Berlin, where he sang Bacchus to Della Casa's Ariadne in Strauss's opera, Fenton in Falstaff, Don José in Carmen and Riccardo in Un Ballo In Maschera, among others. In 1963, he was at the Aix-en-Provence festival, singing Tamino in The Magic Flute, and Idamante.
By 1966, he was singing even further afield - as Pinkerton in Vancouver, Handel's Jephtha in Hamburg and Cavaradossi in Prague. Many of his later appearances were with Scottish Opera, as - among others - Faust, Dmitri (Boris Godunov), Bob Boles (Peter Grimes) and Cassio (Otello).
McAlpine was quite the opposite of the traditional tenor. Always unassuming and reticent about his talent, he preferred to help others rather than further his own interests. Had he been more ambitious, his career might have been even more substantial. His singing, unforced, pleasing in tone and ever musical, was a joy to hear.
It is preserved on the 1956 Glyndebourne recording of Idomeneo, where he sings the High Priest, and as Walter Raleigh in a 1959 set of Edward German's Merrie England, where his account of The English Rose air catches the plaintive quality of his voice.
He ended his life as he would have wished: still in harness, after suffering a heart attack following a session at the Guildhall School of Music, where he began to teach singing after diabetes forced him to give up his performance commitments in the 1970s. |