Stuart Burrows, Welsh Lyric Tenor Who Straddled the Atlantic, Dies at 92

New York Times

05-07-2025

Stuart Burrows, a Welsh lyric tenor prized by conductors on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1970s and '80s for his agile singing in Mozart, becoming a mainstay at the Metropolitan Opera and at Covent Garden in London, died on Sunday in Cardiff, Wales. He was 92.
His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his son, Mark.
Mr. Burrows was a coal miner's son who was schooled in the chapels of Cilfynydd, the village where he was born. His clear voice and attention to detail would make him an ideal Ottavio in 'Don Giovanni' and Tamino in 'The Magic Flute.'
His control was effortless throughout the full tenor range, his tone rich and unforced, as in his role as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin.' In Georg Solit's 1974 recording of that opera, Mr. Burrows's voice was 'most beautiful and sensitive,' the critic John Warrack wrote in a review in the magazine Gramophone.
Mr. Burrows nearly opted for a professional rugby career as a young man in the early 1950s — he turned down a contract with the club in Leeds at the last minute — but he knew he had a gift that he could not ignore, though his career wouldn't blossom for another decade.
'I knew I could sing,' he told the BBC in 1972. Yet, he added, 'I never had ambition to be a singer.' Singing was merely part of the landscape in bardic Wales; the renowned baritone Geraint Evans was born in the same village — and even on the same street — as Mr. Burrows.
He had settled happily into a role as a schoolteacher in nearby Bargoed, teaching woodworking and music, 'a job which he enjoyed immensely,' Roger Wimbush wrote in a biographical sketch in Gramophone in 1971. But then Mr. Burrows sang 'Il Mio Tesoro' from 'Don Giovanni,' in Welsh, in a singing competition in 1959 at the age-old national Eisteddfod festival, and won.
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