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John Coates began his career as a baritone. He appeared in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus at the Savoy in 1893 and subsequently toured as Mr. Goldbury in "Utopia, (Limited)". He played a few seasons of musical comedy and then decided to re-train his voice as a tenor.
It was during this period that he sang Sullivan's ballad 'The Absent- Minded Beggar' at a concert at the Alhambra with Sullivan conducting. The song had been written at the time of the Boer War to words by Kipling.
Coates made his opera debut as Claudio in Stanford's "Much Ado About Nothing" at Covent Garden in 1901. He appeared with the Moody Manners Opera Company in 1907-8 and sang Tristan and Siegfried for Beecham at Covent Garden in 1910-11. He had an extremely successful career in oratorio; he was Elgar's favourite Gerontius. After 1914 he specialized in Lieder.
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