thumb|right|Peter Dawson singing with New South Wales police in the 1930s

Peter Smith Dawson (31 January 188227 September 1961) was an Australian bass-baritone and songwriter and Alison, née Miller. The youngest of nine children, he attended East Adelaide Primary School, then Pulteney Street School.

He was sent to London to be taught by Sir Charles Santley, who first sent him to F. L. Bamford of Glasgow for six months' basic training and coaching in vocal exercises, arias, oratorio pieces and classical songs. He then studied from 1903 to 1907 with Santley, who gave him a thorough training in voice production and a meticulous understanding of the great oratorios, especially Handel's Messiah, Mendelssohn's Elijah and Haydn's The Creation. In 1904, he joined Santley on an eight-week concert tour of the West of England with the soprano Emma Albani.

He attended a large number of performances at Covent Garden during the first decade of the 20th century and heard many of the leading lower-voiced male singers of the age, including the baritones Titta Ruffo, Pasquale Amato, Mattia Battistini, Mario Sammarco and the basses Marcel Journet, Édouard de Reszke and Pol Plançon. Throughout his life he acknowledged the "bel canto" example of Battistini. In addition to Italian and French opera, he grew to admire the German music dramas of Richard Wagner.

On 20 May 1905, he married Annie Mortimer "Nan" Noble, daughter of the box-office manager of the Alhambra Theatre, who sang professionally in the soprano range under the name Annette George.

After the war and with another South African tour under his belt, Dawson returned to England. His voice was now entering its peak phase. A British tour ensued with International Celebrity Concerts, involving recitals of operatic numbers. Accompanied on the piano by Gerald Moore, he then gave lieder recitals at the Wigmore Hall in 1924. An extensive Australian tour (his sixth) occurred in 1931, and he paid further visits to his homeland in 1933, 1935, early 1939 and 1948–49. He made an extensive singing tour of India, Burma and the Straits Settlements during the 1930s; he also visited Ireland. His first BBC radio broadcast was made in 1931 and included lieder by Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms; he subsequently became a prolific broadcaster, and was still active "on air" as late as the 1950s.

He was in Australia at the outbreak of World War II. Too old (at 57) to enlist, he contributed to the war effort as director of the family firm of Thomas Dawson & Sons, which was producing tins for military use, and by broadcasting and recording songs as well as touring army camps with concert parties.

Recognition

In 2007, his 1931 recording of the song "Along the Road to Gundagai" was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry.

In 1984, Dawson was chosen by the Guinness Book of Recorded Sound as one of the top 10 singers on disc of all time, listed alongside Elvis Presley and operatic tenor Enrico Caruso.

References

Further reading

  • Excerpt of Peter Dawson singing 'Along the Road to Gundagai' in 1931 on australianscreen online
  • Peter Dawson at the National Film and Sound Archive
  • Peter Dawson in AusStage
  • Digitally restored recordings