Clive Carey

Francis Clive Savill Carey (30 May 188330 April 1968), known as Clive Carey, was an English baritone, singing teacher, composer, opera producer and folk song collector.

Biography Clive Carey was born at Sible Hedingham, Essex, in 1883. He was a chorister in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, and then attended Sherborne School before becoming an Organ Scholar at Clare College in 1901. He then entered the Royal College of Music (RCM) under the auspices of the Grove Scholarship in Composition, studying under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (composition) and James H. Ley (singing). He had further study with Jean de Reszke in Paris and Nice.

He made his London debut in a song recital in 1907, making an immediate impression. The Times commented that he had "a baritone voice of wide compass and attractive quality, which he produces in very easy manner and with an assurance that is by no means common in a young singer. His songs lay well off the beaten track ... the singer showed himself thoroughly at home in them all." On 1 and 2 December 1911 he played Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute at Cambridge, in a performance he himself produced, in which the English translation by Edward J. Dent was used for the first time. After the war, he took part in Rutland Boughton's performances at Glastonbury.

In 1924 he was appointed Director of Singing at the Elder Conservatorium at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, and also appeared there in straight acting roles with a repertory company. He contributed an article on English folk songs to an Australian Theosophist magazine. He then returned to the RCM, where he lectured and gave English folk song recitals. From 1932 he confined himself mainly to teaching and operatic production, but he also sang occasionally at Sadler's Wells, and in 1936 he appeared at Covent Garden as Master of the Chorus in Oedipus Rex.

Clive Carey was active in restoring the original intentions of the composers who interested him, by removing accumulated traditions in the performances of certain of their operas. and Melmillo was performed at the 1932 Proms by Steuart Wilson. Other songs include The Spring, Ernest Farrar, Percy Lubbock and other notable people. There is a large collection of his papers and letters in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. An "informal biography" of Edward Dent, Duet for Two Voices compiled by Clive Carey's nephew Hugh Carey, was published in 1979 based on the 400 or so letters exchanged by Dent and Carey.

He died in London on 30 April 1968, aged 84. He and his wife, who also died in 1968, are buried at the Holy Trinity Parish Church, Claygate, Surrey. His obituary appeared in Vol. I, No. 4 of the Folk Music Journal, 1968.