Neil Warren Smith - " I've Prepared My Plan" THE THIEVING MAGPIE (Rossini) 1966

Neil Warren-Smith was the most admired and loved Australian bass-baritone of the 1950’s through to his sudden death in 1981. His voice and stage persona had a warmth which audiences loved and his sense of comedy was as strong as his skill with pathos. He was born on September 11th 1929, in Melbourne and was named Neil Warren. Encouraged by his mother, Neil began vocal studies with local voice teachers and worked in his father’s butcher shop. Hector Crawford, well-known conductor, engaged him for Music for the People concerts and prepared him for major competitions. Warren-Smith then began studies at the Henry & Annie Portnoj singing studio in Melbourne. His first role on the operatic stage was Leporello in Don Giovanni with the National Theatre Movement in 1955. That same year, he won the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s vocal competition. The prize included appearances with the ABC symphony orchestras and the concerts were conducted by Joseph Post. The Elizabethan Trust Opera had been newly formed and Joseph Post was the Music Director. In the 1956 season he debuted as Antonio in The Marriage of Figaro, sang the Speaker in The Magic Flute, Masetto and Commendatore in Don Giovanni and appeared in the chorus in Così fan tutte and, for the next quarter century, performed every year for the national company. Neil Warren-Smith’s repertoire for Opera Australia covered almost every period, style and fach including operas by Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Britten as well as Gilbert and Sullivan and Johann Strauss II. His Boris Godunov, King Philip II in Don Carlos and Kutuzov in Prokofiev’s War and Peace (which was Opera Australia’s first performance at the newly-opened Sydney Opera House) were profoundly memorable, as was his Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kecal in The Bartered Bride and the title role of Gianni Schicchi at the other end of the operatic spectrum. He made a brief visit to Sadler’s Wells Opera in 1966 and returned there (renamed English National Opera at the London Coliseum) early 1975 as Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier but, other than performances in New Zealand, Warren-Smith remained faithful to his home company He is heard here as Podestà (the Mayor) in Rossini's THE THEIVING MAGPIE (LA GAZZA LADRA) in a performance (sung in an English translation) from the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London on February 19th 1966. The conductor is Bryan Balkwill.