Richard Lewis studied first in his native Manchester and then at London’s Royal Academy of Music. After the interruption of the Second World War he began his mature career in 1946 and in the following year made the first of many noted appearances at Glyndebourne and at Covent Garden (where he participated in the premières of Walton’s Troilus and Cressida (1954) and Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage (1954–55) and King Priam (1962). His repertoire ranged from Monteverdi and Mozart to Schoenberg and Britten. He was equally gifted as an oratorio and lieder singer.