PHILIP POTTER

Philip Potter joined the company in 1961 as a principal tenor and soon gained great popularity.

He has had successes in other fields, winning many awards as a boy soprano and including the tenor prize and the Gilbert and Sullivan prize among those that he won at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. During the war he learned to speak Welsh, and it is fitting that he should have become a favourite on TWW's Sunday afternoon programme, "Land of Song". His musicals include "Where's Charley", "Marigold", and "The Flower Drum Song"; but it was his singing with Jean Hindmarsh in "The Pirates of Penzance" during the 1961-62 season at the Savoy Theatre that led Andrew Porter to write of him in the Financial Times as a potential Duke in "Rigoletto" and to continue: "a fresh-voiced, boyish tenor who gained confidence as the evening progressed until he sang his duet "Ah, must I leave thee here" in beautiful style, it might have been "Ah, Si ben mio".

One of the warmest admirers of his work was Nellie Briercliffe, regarded by many as the most charming soubrette the company ever had. Herself a much-loved Tessa, she said of Philip's Luis: "The best I have ever seen.

Philip left the company in 1970 and became a publican.

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