Obituary by Sarah Lenton, writer, lecturer and broadcaster
Kenneth Woollam, who died aged 83 on 15 April 2020, was one of the great spinto tenors of his generation. Though oddly enough, in spite of the dramatic, heroic, attributes associated with this voice, which Woollam had in spades, it was as a gentle giant, Pierre Buzukhov that he shot to fame. He made his debut in this role in 1972, when English National Opera staged Prokofiev’s epic War and Peace. It was a daunting start to a career: “I had no stage experience, he wrote, no knowledge of make- up…. I was terrified. And he remained forever, grateful to the producer, Colin Graham, and the rest of the cast for getting him through the rehearsals. Yet, from the moment he made his entrance on the First Night, it was obvious he’d entered his kingdom. Pierre is War and Peace, and Woollam was Pierre. He got rave reviews, not just for a promising debut, but for the vocal and dramatic qualities that made his character stand out, he was “touching and vocally sensitive as the scholarly Pierre Bezukhov….” He was also alarmingly capable of picking up the rake, Anatol and — apparently absentmindedly — dropping him again on the floor.
For the next 12 years, Woollam was a principal tenor at ENO. He felt these were the golden days for the company and he was in the middle of them, playing Florestan, Radames, Calaf, Herod, Bacchus, the Italian tenor in ENO’s milestone Der Rosenkavalier, roles in the Janacek operas, for which ENO was famous, and first performances in the enormous modern operas of the period — David Blake’s Toussaint and Ian Hamilton’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun. But it was of course his Wagner roles that defined his operatic career: a heroic Siegfried, a romantic, baffled Sigmund, and an impetuous Walther.
Early years, ENO and international career
Kenneth Jeffrey Woollam was born in Chester on 16 January 1937. His career started early with a place in the Chester Cathedral Choir at the age of 10 and promotion to Head Chorister within a year. “It was a great discipline, we became young professionals, that was a great help to me later on.” National Service turned out to be another step on the way: he was accepted, in fact scooped up, to become a vocalist in the Royal Signals Band and Orchestra the moment his basic training was over. For two years he toured the UK and West Germany with the band, learning and performing songs at high speed and acquiring a formidable musical memory. At the end of his Service, the army sent him to audition for the Royal College of Music, where he was accepted immediately, offered an award and met the girl he was going to marry — his accompanist, Phoebe Scrivenor.
From there, he went to join that nursery of future soloist, the Glyndebourne chorus, and after two seasons was accepted by the BBC Singers. Two years later came the inevitable crisis. Woollam was offered the chance to sing Gerontius in London, asked for time off, was refused, and sent in his resignation immediately. There were five difficult years of session work and solo engagements, but eventually the latter became more numerous and prestigious, and it ended with an audition for ENO and the offer to play Pierre. Twelve golden years followed, ending (more or less) with the change of regime. Mark, Elder and David Poutney inaugurated what came to be known as “The Power House Years” and Woollam was in at the start with a magnificent performance of the eponymous hero in Wagners Rienzi. The director, Nicholas Hytner, had updated the show to the 1930s, and Woollam held his own amongst “vast expanses of black marble, chromium-plated doors, and intimidatingly, enormous statues of muscle-bound warriors,” as Michael Billington put it, but even so, he felt it was time to go freelance. His ENO career came full circle with a legendary tour by the company of the USA and performances of War and Peace at the Metropolitan Opera in 1984.
Woollam made his Royal Opera House debut as Aegisthus in Electra in 1988, by which time he was a well-known soloist all over Europe. He was a regular broadcaster for the Proms and took on the large scale, oratorios, Gerontius, Gurrelieder, Das Lied von der Erde and Mahler‘s 8th Symphony. His operatic career continue to flourish, he sang Siegmund with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Walther in Lille, Manrico, in Bergen, Janaek, in Germany, Nielsen‘s Saul og David (in Danish) in Amsterdam, and Siegmund and Bacchus for Scottish Opera. Television appearances, and films all came his way — he was seen as Alfredo, Canio and Hoffman on film, and was in the televised performance of Bernstein’s Songfest conducted by the composer
Teaching and coaching
In 1985 Woollam was asked to become a professor of singing at the Royal College of Music, a job at which he was exceptionally gifted. Many other posts came his way, including teaching music theatre at the Royal Academy of Music, and — a surprising development — vocal coach for Glenn Close in David Puttnam’s film Meeting Venus. This led to other showbiz engagements, and Lenny Henry and Elaine Page both turned up at his home in Chiswick for coaching.
Kenneth Woollam retired from professional music life in 1992, having been made an Honorary Member of the RCM, and earned his place in Grove’s Dictionary of Opera where Noel Goodwin credited him as “a spinto tenor with a firm, grainy tone, combining well-paced stamina with poetic feeling.” In his latter years, he became an imposing figure in the sanctuary of his parish church, Saint Michael and all Angels, Bedford Park, and a benevolent presence backstage where he helped generations of curates of very mixed ability to get over the fright of singing in public. He was always to be found surrounded by a devoted family and leaves his wife, Phoebe, four daughters and nine grandchildren.