The Richard Tauber Memorial Scholarship

Tauber held a special place amongst singers - a tenor of rare quality, equally at home in grand opera and in operetta, darling of the Vienna public, yet forced to leave as a refugee, he made a second career in London and Londoners claimed him as their own. His death was felt by many as a personal loss and left a void. The Tauber Memorial Concert of February 1948 was held in homage to a great singer and in an attempt to find a successor through a Tauber Memorial Fund. The proceeds of the concert were modest, but the Luton Girls Choir, with whom Tauber had much enjoyed working during his last years generously donated the royalties of their last joint recording, and these royalties kept coming in for several years - enough to fund the first few scholarships.

The first auditions for a new Tauber were held in 1950 - and were abortive: Elisabeth Schumann decided that none of the competitors came up to her friend Richard's standard. We learnt that not every generation has its Tauber, but we persisted in the search. From 1951 on, there was a Tauber competition on average every two years. Each had 80 to 100 applicants, all heard in preliminary auditions, with the ten or so likeliest candidates proceeding to a public final audition. These were held at the Wigmore Hall before a distinguished jury and in the presence of representatives of the opera houses, the press, concert agents and others who might be of help to the young singers - there could be only one winner, but the others were also heard and many were offered opportunities as singers as a result. Tauber award winners and competitors have made their contribution in opera houses all over the world.

The original purpose of the Richard Tauber Scholarship was to help young singers to study at the Music Academy in Vienna for a year or two, this at a time when good operatic training was not easy to find in Britain, while Vienna was pre-eminent. At first, when we were still looking for a British Tauber, the competition was for male singers only. In the late 1960s the scholarship was opened to British women, and in the mid 1970s, when it was considered that ample opportunities for operatic training were available in Britain, the Tauber Scholarship was turned into a Richard Tauber Prize, still to be used in an Anglo-Austrian musical context, but not necessarily limited to formal study. In 1980 the prize was opened also to Austrian singers. Since 1988 a Ferdinand Rauter Memorial Prize has been awarded to the best accompanist at the Tauber Final auditions.

Funds from the original Tauber concert and from royalties were used up by the first three or four scholarships. From then on the scholarships and prizes were financed from the Society's earnings on concerts, supplemented in recent years by generous grants from the Fisher Foundation.

Since 1951, 22 Tauber awards have been made: Hugh Bcresford, Ronald Jackson, George Fourie, Raymond Hayter Alan Mayall, Paul Smith, Richard Angas, Alexander Oliver, Hugh Sheehan, Richard Saltcr, Abigail Ryan, Patricia Taylor, Simon Vaughan, Cynthia Buchan, Robin Leggate, Claire Powell, Gabriele Fontana.John Hancorn, Anna Steiger, Simon Keenly side Lynton Atkinson, William Dazely.