STAGES Episode 550: GRAEME EWER Pt1

Australia’s best known character tenor, Graeme Ewer, was born in Melbourne and appeared in the Australian Premiere Season of South Pacific in the role of Jerome - at age twelve! He studied voice with a handful of teachers in Melbourne including Gertrude Johnston and Annie Portnoj – competing in various singing competitions where he was a finalist in the 1952 popular radio variety contest Australia’s Amateur Hour. 

In 1964 and 1965, he performed in three opera productions for Victorian Opera Company, then began a two year contract as Alfred Barrett in Robert  and Elizabeth for the Garnet H Carroll Management. 

In 1966/67, Graeme Ewer performed in The King and I, Annie Get Your Gun and The Music Man for Brett Adams Tent Theatre. The following year, he joined The Australian Elizabethan Trust Opera Company (which became The Australian Opera and, later, Opera Australia) where he enjoyed a thirty-five-year career performing seventy-seven roles. 

He was an audience favourite and was a master of characterisation and comic timing. His four roles (Andres, Cochenille, Pitichinaccio & Frantz) in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann were unique, unsurpassed successes – as was his Njegus in The Merry Widow. 

He performed in Les Contes d’Hoffmann for San Diego Opera in 1994 and in The Merry Widow for Vancouver Opera in 1976 – both at the invitation of conductor Richard Bonynge. A career highlight was performing the title role in Albert Herring at a Royal Command Performance at the Sydney Opera House but, one imagines that Tom Rakewell in The Rake’s Progress and Gustav von Aschenbach in Death in Venice (rarities in his performing repertoire) were personal highlights.  

Graeme Ewer appears on numerous commercial recordings and DVDs. He was awarded a Member, Order of Australia, AM, in 1994 and received the Opera Australia Trophy 2001.  His dedication to his craft and the operatic art-form has been a lesson to at least two generations of performers. Graeme’s career defines him as one of the jewels in the crown of opera in Australia.

(Text courtesy Brian Castles-Onion)

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