Grahame Clifford

Who was Grahame Clifford?

Grahame Clifford, was an English singer and actor, known for comic parts in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and in character roles for the Royal Opera Company, Covent Garden.

In his early career Clifford played a wide range of roles in operas by composers from Handel to Vaughan Williams, and in mainstream repertory operas. He also acted in plays, produced theatre and taught. From 1939 to 1946 he was principal comedian of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company playing the comic leads in Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas.

After the war Clifford was a founding member of the Covent Garden Opera Company with which he played character roles in the German, French and Italian repertoire. In the last decades of his life he lived in New Zealand, where he performed, taught and directed until his retirement in 1981.