Covent Garden and Thomas Allen remember Robert Tear

I would like to add my voice to the many who have expressed their great sadness on the death of Robert Tear on the 29th March. Bob was a dear friend and I count myself lucky to have met and known such a unique individual ; curious about the world and its ways, vital, inquisitive, funny, witty, restless, helpful, kind, generous and loving. He could also be infuriating, frustrating and hard to pin down, but these are the qualities I experienced in this greatly treasured friend and sometime mentor and it was ALL of these qualities that made Bob the completely full and rounded character that he was. I sang with him first when I was twenty four years old in the Beethoven 9th with Solti conducting and we hit it off immediately. He, being fifteen years older and more experienced than I , recognised that it was a "big deal" for me to be singing with Solti in the Festival Hall and took it upon himself to make me comfortable and at ease and so a long friendship began. We sang with each other often over the years, most memorably in a production of The Turn of the Screw for Cologne Opera which started life in Munich and to which Bob and I were attached for a few years; he singing, of course,Peter Quint (who could surpass him in the role?) and I as the Governess. Needless to say, we had many an adventure during those years, many a laugh, the odd tear (pardon the pun) and stories enough from our travels to last us plenty of dinner parties yet to come. Bob was fearless, or seemed to me to be. Who else could talk his way through passport control in the UK carrying my one year old daughter in his arms, no passport for her, by simple stating that "the mother is just coming." ??? And when he and his wife, Hilary, my daughter's nanny and I went for car drive in Munich and found ourselves stuck in no man's land between two passport control areas, with only Hilary's passport to serve, managed to bluster his way through with his no nonsense approach and the promise of tickets for the opera we were doing the next night. We share friends in common, Bob and Hilary, Jonathan and I and we will miss greatly one of our dearest pals, but also that larger-than-life, extraordinary human being who, although he died too soon, lived the lifetime of half a dozen people. Last Sunday I sat by his bed, knowing that it would be the last time I would see him. Once upon a time, he wrote me a poem, which was very touching.... how much more that means to me now. I will be forever grateful to have had such a friend in my life. Goodbye Darling Bob. Isobel Buchanan