Ralph Mason

John Francis Mason (1 September 1938 – 10 August 2016), known by his stage name Ralph Mason, was an English singer best remembered for his performances in leading tenor roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the 1960s and 1970s.

After service in the British army, ultimately as the personal secretary to Field Marshal Montgomery, Mason began a professional singing career in 1959, joining D'Oyly Carte later that year. and attended Brighton Grammar School. While his father fought in the Second World War, his mother worked at his aunt's cafe to support the family until his father returned to resume his business as a barber; still, the family was very poor. Mason was not academically inclined but showed early promise as a singer, performing as a boy soprano soloist with local church choirs where he could earn some pocket money. In school productions, he played tenor leads in Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including in H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Yeomen of the Guard. He later sang with the Sussex branch of The Gilbert and Sullivan Society. After completing school, he worked as a clerk at a coal company for a year. and eventually he became the personal secretary to Field Marshal Montgomery.

In 1959, upon his discharge, Mason appeared on the radio and in concert appearances, and studied voice, before joining the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a chorister, as John Mason, although he soon began using Ralph Mason as his stage name. He was eventually given the small parts of First and Second Citizen, and then Leonard Meryll in The Yeomen of the Guard and Luiz and Francesco in The Gondoliers. He married Anne Sessions, a D'Oyly Carte soprano, in Brighton in 1961. In 1963, he and his wife left D'Oyly Carte to spend two years in the cast of My Fair Lady, first at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London and then on tour, where he understudied and sometimes appeared as Freddie.

He returned to D'Oyly Carte, again as a chorister, understudying and sometimes playing several of the leading roles. In 1967, he was promoted to principal tenor, appearing over the next half dozen years in the roles of Mr Box in Cox and Box, the Defendant in Trial by Jury, Alexis in The Sorcerer, Ralph Rackstraw in H.M.S. Pinafore, the Duke of Dunstable in Patience, Tolloller in Iolanthe, Cyril in Princess Ida, Richard Dauntless in Ruddigore, Leonard in Yeomen and Marco in The Gondoliers. Sessions left the company in 1969 and soon gave birth to the couple's daughter, Amanda (whom they called Mandy). The family established a home in Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, where they lived in a flat above Sessions's parents; he disliked his mother-in-law intensely. He worked extensively with the concert group "The World of Gilbert and Sullivan", led by Peter Pratt. He worked extensively with the concert group "The World of Gilbert and Sullivan", led by Peter Pratt. They married in Cardiff in 1992 and had two sons, James and Jack. Around the time of his retirement, he began to develop Parkinson's disease. and a few numbers (but no solos) as Marco and Tolloller on a D'Oyly Carte collection titled Songs and Snatches (1970). He can also be heard as First and Third Yeoman on the Welsh National Opera's 1995 Telarc recording of Yeomen. He made various other recordings with Welsh National Opera, including Destiny (1992), Chandos CHAN3029, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.