Ian Wallace (singer)
Encyclopedia
Ian Bryce Wallace OBE (10 July 191912 October 2009) was a British bass-baritone
opera and concert singer, actor and broadcaster of Scottish extraction.
His family intended him for a career in the law, but he was attracted to the stage. Originally an actor in non-musical plays, he was persuaded to try opera and made an immediate success. He played a range of buffo parts in operas, at Glyndebourne
and internationally. Wallace maintained a simultaneous career in revue
, straight theatre, and broadcasting. He appeared in pantomime
and at the Royal Variety Performance
. As a broadcaster, he was a long-time panellist on the BBC
radio panel game
My Music, and he presented a television series of introductions to operas in the 1960s, as well as appearing in light entertainment shows singing a range of songs from ballads to comedy numbers. He performed his one-man show for many years. Flanders and Swann
wrote several songs for him, and their best-known song, "The Hippopotamus", became indelibly associated with him.
Member of Parliament
, Sir John Wallace
and his wife Mary Bryce Wallace (née Temple). He was educated at Charterhouse School
and Trinity Hall, Cambridge
, where he read law and joined the Cambridge Footlights. During his World War II
service in the Royal Artillery
, he organised and starred in troop shows. Wallace was invalided out of the Army in 1944, after he contracted spinal tuberculosis
, and decided that his career lay in entertainment rather than the law.
He first appeared on the professional stage in Glasgow
, in Ashley Dukes
's The Man With a Load of Mischief. He made his London stage début in 1945 at Sadler's Wells in James Bridie
's play The Forrigan Reel, directed by Alastair Sim
. He was doubtful of his suitability for an operatic career, but in 1946 friends persuaded him to audition for the conductor Alberto Erede
, who engaged him for the first season of the New London Opera Company.
in 1946, as Colline in La bohème
. He sang there with established operatic stars such as Mariano Stabile
and Margherita Grandi
. His other roles with the company were the Sacristan (Tosca
), Bartolo (The Barber of Seville
), Ceprano (Rigoletto
) and Masetto (Don Giovanni
). The critic of The Times
thought Wallace overplayed the buffo element, both as the Sacristan and Bartolo, but praised his singing.
From 1948 to 1961, Wallace performed regularly at Glyndebourne Festival Opera
, making his début as Samuele in Un ballo in maschera
but soon specialising in basso buffo
roles, notably Bartolo in both The Marriage of Figaro
and The Barber of Seville. By the early 1950s his comic skills were attracting unreserved praise. He added the buffo role of Melitone in La forza del destino
to his repertoire, but he also played more serious roles including Mephistopheles in Gounod
's Faust
.
He made his Italian operatic début as Masetto in Parma
in 1950. Later, he sang Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola
in Rome in 1955 and Bartolo in Barber in Venice in 1956. He again sang Don Magnifico, this time in English, for Sadler's Wells Opera
in 1960. In 1961, The Times wrote of his Bartolo, "as magnificent a character study as ever, excellently sung and never for a moment over-played." He performed at the Bregenz Festivals in 1964 and 1965. From 1965 onwards he appeared regularly with Scottish Opera
, for whom his roles included Leporello in Don Giovanni, Pistol in Falstaff
to the Falstaff of Geraint Evans
, and the Duke of Plaza Toro in The Gondoliers
. Again in Scotland, he appeared at Ledlanet Nights
in his one-man shows and other performances including Colas in Mozart's early singspiel Bastien und Bastienne
; Schlendrian in Bach
's Coffee Cantata; and Mr Somers in Gentleman's Island by Joseph Horovitz
. Also in the 1960s, he sang the main Donizetti buffo roles, Don Pasquale
(Welsh National Opera
, 1967) and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore
(Glyndebourne Touring Opera, 1968). A late addition to his repertoire was Polyphemus in Handel
's Acis and Galatea in 1977.
Though not a fluent sight-reader of unfamiliar music, Wallace took on out-of-the way operatic roles including Konchak in Prince Igor
, Wagner in Busoni
's Doktor Faust
, the title role in Weber
's Peter Schmoll, the buffo lead, Buonafede, in Haydn
's Il mondo della luna
, and Calender in Gluck
's comédie mêlée d'ariettes
, La rencontre imprévue
.
at the London Palladium
and in pantomime as one of the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella
. In 1962, invited to present a one-man show at the Criterion Theatre
, London, he preferred to share the bill, and his "after-dinner entertainment" 4 to the Bar had a cast of four. During the run of the show Noël Coward
came backstage and said to him, "You have a very good command of your audience. Mind you, anyone who has the hardihood to allow the curtain to rise on them at the Criterion Theatre, sitting in a wing chair with a glass of brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, has bloody well got to have command of his audience".
From the early 1960s to the 1980s, Wallace performed a one-man show, featuring operatic excerpts, ballads and comic songs. He was particularly noted for his performances of the music of Flanders and Swann
, and "The Hippopotamus" became his signature tune
. Its refrain ("Mud, mud, glorious mud,/Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood") suggested the titles for both of his volumes of memoirs. In his Who's Who
profile, under "hobbies", he wrote "singing a song about a hippopotamus to children of all ages." He also sang Flanders and Swann's songs about a rhinoceros, an elephant, a warthog, a gondolier and an income tax collector. His association with them led to his participation in the Hoffnung Music Festival
s, in which he performed Variations on a Bedtime Theme, a series of spoof advertisements for a well-known bedtime drink, in the style of Bach
, Mozart
, Verdi
, Stravinsky
and Schoenberg
, and The Barber of Darmstadt, a send-up of atonal composers. He also contributed to Ledlanet Nights, held at the then house of his first publisher, John Calder
, appearing there in his one-man show and in comic roles in musical works.
In the theatre, Wallace's roles included Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream
, of which The Times wrote, "he takes the stage like one inspired, and the result can seldom have been funnier". Other acting roles included César in a West End
musical version of Marcel Pagnol
's Fanny
with Robert Morley
, the Emperor of China in Cole Porter
's Aladdin
, Toad in Toad of Toad Hall
, and Ralph in The One O'Clock World in 1984.
's Geneviève de Brabant
, presented in full gendarme's uniform, which he repeated many times over a 10-year period with a number of accompanying tenors and pianists. He broadcast in Gilbert and Sullivan
operas at the Proms
and, for commercial television, devised and presented Singing for Your Supper, three series of half-hour introductions to operas, including The Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni.
He acted occasionally on television and in films, one example being the 1958 film of tom thumb
. A later character role in a television drama was the Praelector, spouting Latin and bemusing Ian Richardson
as the new head of a Cambridge college, in a dramatisation of Tom Sharpe
's Porterhouse Blue
.
To the general public, Wallace was best known as a panellist throughout the 27-year run of the BBC
radio panel game
My Music, from 1967 to 1994, not missing a single episode of more than 520 that were broadcast. John Amis
, who appeared opposite Wallace in the series, remembered, "There were many pleasurable things about being in My Music.... One was that I was actually paid every week to listen to Ian's singing: ballads, folksongs, straight songs and opera, he sang them all so that you could savour the words, and the actual sound was thrilling, a high bass-baritone with a marvellous, sonorous top F, a sound that went to the heart." Occasionally Wallace would choose a rumbustious comic song, some of which he also included in his LP recordings, including "The One Eyed Riley", "I Can't Do My Bally Bottom Button Up", and the sewerman's song, "Down Below".
Wallace died at the age of 90 in Highgate
in North London
, survived by his wife Patricia, daughter Rosemary and son John. He is buried in West Runton
, Norfolk.
and The Barber of Seville
, with Glyndebourne Festival Opera
forces, conducted by Vittorio Gui
. His other Glyndebourne recordings included Ser Matteo del Sarto in Busoni
's Arlecchino
, conducted by John Pritchard
, Don Magnifico in Rossini's La Cenerentola
, and the Governor in Rossini's Le comte Ory
, both conducted by Gui. His other operatic recordings included Altomaro in Handel
's Sosarme
, and Lockit in The Beggar's Opera
, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
.
Wallace made several recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan
roles. For Sargent's EMI
series he recorded Pooh-Bah in The Mikado
(1957) and Mountararat in Iolanthe
(1959). He recorded excerpts from H.M.S. Pinafore
, The Pirates of Penzance
, The Mikado and The Gondoliers
for an LP issued as "A Gilbert and Sullivan Spectacular", in 1974. He made two further recordings of the role of Pooh-Bah, for BBC
Radio in 1966 and BBC television in 1973, but these recordings have never been released commercially.
With Donald Swann
he recorded Swann's settings of John Betjeman
poems in 1964. He took part in two recordings of Alice in Wonderland
, in 1958 as the Mock Turtle, and in 1966 as the Caterpillar, in a set narrated by Dirk Bogarde
. Discs of his programmes of varied music included An Evening's Entertainment with Ian Wallace, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
in 1971, and From Mud to Mandalay in 1977.
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
opera and concert singer, actor and broadcaster of Scottish extraction.
His family intended him for a career in the law, but he was attracted to the stage. Originally an actor in non-musical plays, he was persuaded to try opera and made an immediate success. He played a range of buffo parts in operas, at Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
and internationally. Wallace maintained a simultaneous career in revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
, straight theatre, and broadcasting. He appeared in pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
and at the Royal Variety Performance
Royal Variety Performance
The Royal Variety Performance is a gala evening held annually in the United Kingdom, which is attended by senior members of the British Royal Family, usually the reigning monarch. In more recent years Queen Elizabeth II and The Prince of Wales have alternately attended the performance...
. As a broadcaster, he was a long-time panellist on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio panel game
Panel game
A panel game or panel show is a radio or television game show in which a panel of celebrities participates. Panelists may compete with each other, such as on The News Quiz; facilitate play by guest contestants, such as on Match Game/Blankety Blank; or do both, such as on Wait Wait.....
My Music, and he presented a television series of introductions to operas in the 1960s, as well as appearing in light entertainment shows singing a range of songs from ballads to comedy numbers. He performed his one-man show for many years. Flanders and Swann
Flanders and Swann
The British duo Flanders and Swann were the actor and singer Michael Flanders and the composer, pianist and linguist Donald Swann , who collaborated in writing and performing comic songs....
wrote several songs for him, and their best-known song, "The Hippopotamus", became indelibly associated with him.
Early years
Wallace was born in London, the only son of a LiberalLiberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, Sir John Wallace
John Wallace (Scottish politician)
Sir John Wallace was a Scottish Liberal Party and National Liberal Party politician.He was elected at the 1918 general election as Coalition Liberal Member of Parliament for Dunfermline Burghs...
and his wife Mary Bryce Wallace (née Temple). He was educated at Charterhouse School
Charterhouse School
Charterhouse School, originally The Hospital of King James and Thomas Sutton in Charterhouse, or more simply Charterhouse or House, is an English collegiate independent boarding school situated at Godalming in Surrey.Founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian...
and Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, where he read law and joined the Cambridge Footlights. During his World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
service in the Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
, he organised and starred in troop shows. Wallace was invalided out of the Army in 1944, after he contracted spinal tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, and decided that his career lay in entertainment rather than the law.
He first appeared on the professional stage in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, in Ashley Dukes
Ashley Dukes
Ashley Dukes was an English playwright, critic, and theatre manager.In 1933, he founded the Mercury Theatre of London and wrote plays that appeared in the London West End and on Broadway...
's The Man With a Load of Mischief. He made his London stage début in 1945 at Sadler's Wells in James Bridie
James Bridie
James Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and surgeon whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor....
's play The Forrigan Reel, directed by Alastair Sim
Alastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE was a Scottish character actor who appeared in a string of classic British films. He is best remembered in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 film Scrooge, and for his portrayal of Miss Fritton, the headmistress in two St. Trinian's films...
. He was doubtful of his suitability for an operatic career, but in 1946 friends persuaded him to audition for the conductor Alberto Erede
Alberto Erede
Alberto Erede was an Italian conductor, particularly associated with operatic work.Born in Genoa, Erede studied there before studying in Milan, then with Felix Weingartner at Basle, and after this with Fritz Busch at Dresden. He made his debut in Turin in 1935, conducting Der Ring des Nibelungen....
, who engaged him for the first season of the New London Opera Company.
Opera
Wallace made his operatic début at the Cambridge TheatreCambridge Theatre
The Cambridge Theatre is a West End theatre, on a corner site in Earlham Street facing Seven Dials, in the London Borough of Camden, built in 1929-30. It was designed by Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie; interior partly by Serge Chermayeff, with interior bronze friezes by sculptor Anthony Gibbons...
in 1946, as Colline in La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
. He sang there with established operatic stars such as Mariano Stabile
Mariano Stabile
Mariano Stabile was an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Falstaff.- Career :...
and Margherita Grandi
Margherita Grandi
Margherita Grandi was an Australian-born Italian soprano, particularly associated with dramatic Italian roles. She possessed a powerful voice and was a forceful singing-actress in the grand manner.-Life and career:...
. His other roles with the company were the Sacristan (Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
), Bartolo (The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
), Ceprano (Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
) and Masetto (Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
). The critic of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
thought Wallace overplayed the buffo element, both as the Sacristan and Bartolo, but praised his singing.
From 1948 to 1961, Wallace performed regularly at Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
, making his début as Samuele in Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
but soon specialising in basso buffo
Bass (voice type)
A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
roles, notably Bartolo in both The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
and The Barber of Seville. By the early 1950s his comic skills were attracting unreserved praise. He added the buffo role of Melitone in La forza del destino
La forza del destino
La forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
to his repertoire, but he also played more serious roles including Mephistopheles in Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
's Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
.
He made his Italian operatic début as Masetto in Parma
Parma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
in 1950. Later, he sang Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
in Rome in 1955 and Bartolo in Barber in Venice in 1956. He again sang Don Magnifico, this time in English, for Sadler's Wells Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
in 1960. In 1961, The Times wrote of his Bartolo, "as magnificent a character study as ever, excellently sung and never for a moment over-played." He performed at the Bregenz Festivals in 1964 and 1965. From 1965 onwards he appeared regularly with Scottish Opera
Scottish Opera
Scottish Opera is the national opera company of Scotland, and one of the five national performing arts companies funded by the Scottish Government...
, for whom his roles included Leporello in Don Giovanni, Pistol in Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
to the Falstaff of Geraint Evans
Geraint Evans
Sir Geraint Llewellyn Evans was a Welsh baritone or bass-baritone noted for operatic roles including Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, and the title roles in Falstaff and Wozzeck...
, and the Duke of Plaza Toro in The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
. Again in Scotland, he appeared at Ledlanet Nights
Ledlanet Nights
Ledlanet Nights in Kinrosshire, Scotland, operated from 1962 for around ten years, and was one of the more remarkable artistic ventures in Scotland. This "inventive and not at all flippant little festival" offered performances mounted on a shoestring budget and which were held in the hallway at...
in his one-man shows and other performances including Colas in Mozart's early singspiel Bastien und Bastienne
Bastien und Bastienne
Bastien und Bastienne , K. 50 is a one-act singspiel, a comic opera, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart....
; Schlendrian in Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's Coffee Cantata; and Mr Somers in Gentleman's Island by Joseph Horovitz
Joseph Horovitz
Joseph Horovitz is a British composer and conductor. Horovitz's family emigrated to England in 1938. He studied music and modern languages at New College, Oxford, and later attended the Royal College of Music in London, studying composition with Gordon Jacob. He then undertook a year of further...
. Also in the 1960s, he sang the main Donizetti buffo roles, Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
(Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
, 1967) and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
(Glyndebourne Touring Opera, 1968). A late addition to his repertoire was Polyphemus in Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Acis and Galatea in 1977.
Though not a fluent sight-reader of unfamiliar music, Wallace took on out-of-the way operatic roles including Konchak in Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
, Wagner in Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
's Doktor Faust
Doktor Faust
Doktor Faust is an opera by Ferruccio Busoni with a German libretto by the composer himself, based on the myth of Faust. Busoni worked on the opera, which he intended as his masterpiece, between 1916 and 1924, but it was still incomplete at the time of his death. His pupil Philipp Jarnach finished it...
, the title role in Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
's Peter Schmoll, the buffo lead, Buonafede, in Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
's Il mondo della luna
Il mondo della luna
Il mondo della luna , Hob. 28/7, is an opera buffa by Joseph Haydn with a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, first performed at Eszterháza, Hungary on 3 August 1777. Goldoni's libretto had previously been set by four other composers, first by the composer Baldassare Galuppi and performed in Venice in the...
, and Calender in Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
's comédie mêlée d'ariettes
Comédie mêlée d'ariettes
Comédie mêlée d'ariettes is a form of French opéra comique that developed in the mid 18th century following the Querelle des Bouffons dispute over the respective merits of the French and Italian styles, between serious drama and comedy in opera.The best-known ones are Christoph Willibald Gluck's...
, La rencontre imprévue
La rencontre imprévue
Les pèlerins de la Mecque ou La rencontre imprévue Wq. 32 is a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, a form of opéra comique, composed in 1763 by Christoph Willibald Gluck to a libretto by Louis Hurtaut Dancourt after the 1726 play by Alain René Lesage and d'Orneval....
.
Plays, revue and other stage shows
Early in his Glyndebourne career, Wallace consulted the festival's administrator Moran Caplat on whether he might sing in non-operatic productions elsewhere. Caplat gave him his blessing as long as he did not damage his voice. In opera Wallace was generally cast in comic roles, and he used his comedic skills when he began to appear in revue. In 1953, as well as singing in opera in Britain and internationally, he was in the Royal Variety PerformanceRoyal Variety Performance
The Royal Variety Performance is a gala evening held annually in the United Kingdom, which is attended by senior members of the British Royal Family, usually the reigning monarch. In more recent years Queen Elizabeth II and The Prince of Wales have alternately attended the performance...
at the London Palladium
London Palladium
The London Palladium is a 2,286 seat West End theatre located off Oxford Street in the City of Westminster. From the roster of stars who have played there and many televised performances, it is arguably the most famous theatre in London and the United Kingdom, especially for musical variety...
and in pantomime as one of the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella
Cinderella
"Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper" is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune...
. In 1962, invited to present a one-man show at the Criterion Theatre
Criterion Theatre
The Criterion Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster, and is a Grade II* listed building. It has an official capacity of 588.-Building the theatre:...
, London, he preferred to share the bill, and his "after-dinner entertainment" 4 to the Bar had a cast of four. During the run of the show Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
came backstage and said to him, "You have a very good command of your audience. Mind you, anyone who has the hardihood to allow the curtain to rise on them at the Criterion Theatre, sitting in a wing chair with a glass of brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, has bloody well got to have command of his audience".
From the early 1960s to the 1980s, Wallace performed a one-man show, featuring operatic excerpts, ballads and comic songs. He was particularly noted for his performances of the music of Flanders and Swann
Flanders and Swann
The British duo Flanders and Swann were the actor and singer Michael Flanders and the composer, pianist and linguist Donald Swann , who collaborated in writing and performing comic songs....
, and "The Hippopotamus" became his signature tune
Theme music
Theme music is a piece that is often written specifically for a radio program, television program, video game or movie, and usually played during the title sequence and/or end credits...
. Its refrain ("Mud, mud, glorious mud,/Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood") suggested the titles for both of his volumes of memoirs. In his Who's Who
Who's Who (UK)
Who's Who is an annual British publication of biographies which vary in length of about 30,000 living notable Britons.-History:...
profile, under "hobbies", he wrote "singing a song about a hippopotamus to children of all ages." He also sang Flanders and Swann's songs about a rhinoceros, an elephant, a warthog, a gondolier and an income tax collector. His association with them led to his participation in the Hoffnung Music Festival
Hoffnung Music Festival
The Hoffnung Music Festivals were a series of three humorous classical music festivals held in Royal Festival Hall, London in 1956, 1958 and 1961...
s, in which he performed Variations on a Bedtime Theme, a series of spoof advertisements for a well-known bedtime drink, in the style of Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
and Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, and The Barber of Darmstadt, a send-up of atonal composers. He also contributed to Ledlanet Nights, held at the then house of his first publisher, John Calder
John Calder
John Mackenzie Calder is a Canadian and Scottish publisher who founded Calder Publishing in 1949.-Biography:John Calder was a friend of Samuel Beckett, becoming the main publisher of his prose-texts in Britain after the success of Waiting for Godot on the London stage in 1955-56...
, appearing there in his one-man show and in comic roles in musical works.
In the theatre, Wallace's roles included Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
, of which The Times wrote, "he takes the stage like one inspired, and the result can seldom have been funnier". Other acting roles included César in a West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
musical version of Marcel Pagnol
Marcel Pagnol
Marcel Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie Française.-Biography:...
's Fanny
Fanny (musical)
Fanny is a musical with a book by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan and music and lyrics by Harold Rome. A tale of love, secrets, and passion set in and around the old French port of Marseille, it is based on Marcel Pagnol's trilogy of plays entitled Marius, Fanny and César.The musical premiered on...
with Robert Morley
Robert Morley
Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment...
, the Emperor of China in Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
's Aladdin
Aladdin (TV special)
Aladdin was a 1958 musical fantasy written especially for television with a book by S.J. Perelman and music and lyrics by Cole Porter, telecast in color on the DuPont Show of the Month by CBS. It was Porter's very last musical score. The musical was later presented on stage in London, premiering...
, Toad in Toad of Toad Hall
Toad of Toad Hall
Toad of Toad Hall is the first of several dramatisations of Kenneth Grahame's 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows. It was written by A. A. Milne, with incidental music by Harold Fraser-Simson....
, and Ralph in The One O'Clock World in 1984.
Broadcasting and film
Wallace was one of the performers who popularised classical music on television in the 1960s. He is remembered for his performance of the "Gendarmes' Duet" from OffenbachJacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's Geneviève de Brabant
Geneviève de Brabant
Geneviève de Brabant is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach, first performed in Paris in 1859. The plot is based on the medieval legend of Genevieve of Brabant....
, presented in full gendarme's uniform, which he repeated many times over a 10-year period with a number of accompanying tenors and pianists. He broadcast in Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
operas at the Proms
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
and, for commercial television, devised and presented Singing for Your Supper, three series of half-hour introductions to operas, including The Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni.
He acted occasionally on television and in films, one example being the 1958 film of tom thumb
Tom thumb (film)
Deliberately uncapitalised, tom thumb is a 1958 fantasy-musical film directed by George Pal and released by MGM. It was based on the fairy tale of the same name...
. A later character role in a television drama was the Praelector, spouting Latin and bemusing Ian Richardson
Ian Richardson
Ian William Richardson CBE was a Scottish actor best known for his portrayal of the Machiavellian Tory politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC's House of Cards trilogy. He was also a leading Shakespearean stage actor....
as the new head of a Cambridge college, in a dramatisation of Tom Sharpe
Tom Sharpe
Tom Sharpe is an English satirical author, best known for his Wilt series of novels.Sharpe was born in London and moved to South Africa in 1951, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher, before being deported for sedition in 1961...
's Porterhouse Blue
Porterhouse Blue
Porterhouse Blue is a novel written by Tom Sharpe, first published in 1974. There was a Channel 4 TV series in 1987 based on the novel, adapted by Malcolm Bradbury...
.
To the general public, Wallace was best known as a panellist throughout the 27-year run of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio panel game
Panel game
A panel game or panel show is a radio or television game show in which a panel of celebrities participates. Panelists may compete with each other, such as on The News Quiz; facilitate play by guest contestants, such as on Match Game/Blankety Blank; or do both, such as on Wait Wait.....
My Music, from 1967 to 1994, not missing a single episode of more than 520 that were broadcast. John Amis
John Amis
John Preston Amis , is a British broadcaster, classical music critic, music administrator, and writer. He has been a frequent contributor for The Guardian and to BBC radio and television music programming....
, who appeared opposite Wallace in the series, remembered, "There were many pleasurable things about being in My Music.... One was that I was actually paid every week to listen to Ian's singing: ballads, folksongs, straight songs and opera, he sang them all so that you could savour the words, and the actual sound was thrilling, a high bass-baritone with a marvellous, sonorous top F, a sound that went to the heart." Occasionally Wallace would choose a rumbustious comic song, some of which he also included in his LP recordings, including "The One Eyed Riley", "I Can't Do My Bally Bottom Button Up", and the sewerman's song, "Down Below".
Later years
After retiring from opera, as President of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, Wallace was prominent in the fight to stop the BBC from making drastic cuts in its orchestras in 1980. He served as President of the Council for Music in Hospitals from 1987 to 1999. He also published two volumes of reminiscences: Promise Me You'll Sing Mud (1975) and Nothing Quite Like It (1982), and a third book, Reflections on Scotland (1988).Wallace died at the age of 90 in Highgate
Highgate
Highgate is an area of North London on the north-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath.Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in which to live. It has an active conservation body, the Highgate Society, to protect its character....
in North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
, survived by his wife Patricia, daughter Rosemary and son John. He is buried in West Runton
West Runton
West Runton is a village in North Norfolk, England, approximately ¼ of a mile from the North Sea coast.-Overview:West Runton and East Runton together form the parish of Runton. The village straddles the A149 North Norfolk coast road and is 2½ miles west of Cromer and 1½ miles east of Sheringham...
, Norfolk.
Recordings
Wallace recorded the role of Doctor Bartolo in both The Marriage of FigaroThe Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
and The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
, with Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
forces, conducted by Vittorio Gui
Vittorio Gui
Vittorio Gui was an Italian conductor and composer.Gui was born in Rome in 1885. In 1933 Bruno Walter invited him to be guest conductor at the Salzburg Festival....
. His other Glyndebourne recordings included Ser Matteo del Sarto in Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
's Arlecchino
Arlecchino (opera)
Arlecchino, oder Die Fenster is a one-act opera with spoken dialog by Ferruccio Busoni, with a libretto in German written by the composer in 1913. He completed the music for the opera while living in Zurich in 1916...
, conducted by John Pritchard
John Pritchard
Sir John Michael Pritchard CBE was an English conductor. He was known for his interpretations of Mozart operas and for his support of contemporary music.-Life and career:...
, Don Magnifico in Rossini's La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
, and the Governor in Rossini's Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory is an opéra written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera Il viaggio a Reims written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X...
, both conducted by Gui. His other operatic recordings included Altomaro in Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Sosarme
Sosarme
Sosarme, re di Media is an opera by George Frideric Handel written for the Royal Academy of Music . The text was based on an earlier libretto by Antonio Salvi, Dionisio, Re di Portogallo , and adapted by an unknown writer. Composed in 1732, the original setting of Portugal was changed to Sardis in...
, and Lockit in The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
.
Wallace made several recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
roles. For Sargent's EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
series he recorded Pooh-Bah in The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
(1957) and Mountararat in Iolanthe
Iolanthe
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....
(1959). He recorded excerpts from H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
, The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
, The Mikado and The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
for an LP issued as "A Gilbert and Sullivan Spectacular", in 1974. He made two further recordings of the role of Pooh-Bah, for BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Radio in 1966 and BBC television in 1973, but these recordings have never been released commercially.
With Donald Swann
Donald Swann
Donald Ibrahím Swann was a British composer, musician and entertainer. He is best known to the general public for his partnership of writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders .-Life:...
he recorded Swann's settings of John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
poems in 1964. He took part in two recordings of Alice in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
, in 1958 as the Mock Turtle, and in 1966 as the Caterpillar, in a set narrated by Dirk Bogarde
Dirk Bogarde
Sir Dirk Bogarde was an English actor and novelist. Initially a matinee idol in such films as Doctor in the House and other Rank Organisation pictures, Bogarde later acted in art-house films such as Death in Venice...
. Discs of his programmes of varied music included An Evening's Entertainment with Ian Wallace, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
in 1971, and From Mud to Mandalay in 1977.