Henry Herford

Richard Henry Herford, known professionally as Henry Herford, was a Scottish baritone whose career stretched from Glyndebourne and Covent Garden to the Last Night of the Proms, and from Monteverdi oratorio to neglected twentieth-century song. Born in Edinburgh on 24 February 1947 and raised in Glasgow, he was the son of Jean (nee Hawkins) and Philip Herford, a railway engineer. Early musical grounding came from a local church choir and from his elder brother John, a fine pianist. After Glenalmond College in Perth he read Classics and English at King's College, Cambridge, then studied singing from 1971 to 1976 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where he won the Curtis Gold Medal.

He joined the Glyndebourne Opera Chorus in 1977 and 1978, already standing out in small solo roles such as the Forester in The Cunning Little Vixen and the Speaker in The Magic Flute. He returned to Glyndebourne as Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1981) and as Boris Pasternak in Nigel Osborne's The Electrification of the Soviet Union. Across Britain and Europe he eventually took more than seventy operatic roles, among them Count Almaviva, Guglielmo and Alfonso, Don Giovanni, Germont, Silvio, Dr Falke, and Demetrius (later recorded for Virgin under Richard Hickox). Brief Covent Garden appearances included a Flemish Deputy in Don Carlos. He was equally prized in rarities: Hercules in Gluck's Alceste, Artaxerxes in Cesti's La Dori, Orpheus in Milhaud's Les Malheurs d'Orphee, Roderick in Debussy's unfinished La Chute de la Maison Usher, and Peter Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse.

As a concert singer his oratorio repertoire ran from Monteverdi to living composers. He worked with Simon Rattle, Yehudi Menuhin, Andrew Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, David Willcocks, Richard Hickox and Michael Tilson Thomas, and appeared three times at the BBC Proms, including the Last Night in 1984 and 1985. Recordings include two volumes of Charles Ives songs, American song cycles, Peter Dickinson's Dylan Thomas settings, Arthur Bliss songs, Vaughan Williams's Five Mystical Songs with the Philharmonia under Hilary Davan Wetton, and Handel with King's College Choir under Stephen Cleobury. Recital partners included the Nash Ensemble, Songmakers' Almanac, Endymion, Koenig, Lontano, the Lindsay Quartet and Ensemble Modern.

Herford taught at the RNCM, Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music, and with his wife Lindsay founded the Abingdon Summer School for Solo Singers (1999 until the Covid disruption). They married in 1982 after meeting in the Glyndebourne chorus; sons Thomas and Johnny became professional singers, and daughter Alice completed the family. From 1986 they restored an Elizabethan farmhouse in west Oxfordshire; for twenty years he served as churchwarden at St Denys, Northmoor. He died on 31 July 2026 aged 79 after Parkinson's disease. A celebration of his life was held at Northmoor on 20 August 2026. He is survived by Lindsay, Thomas, Johnny and Alice.