Malcolm Roberts

Malcolm Roberts and I were students together at the Manchester School of Music, a private music school, not the Manchester College of Music and Drama, which doesn't exist, writes A. Geoffrey Mort [further to the obituary by Spencer Leigh, 10 February].

I was reminded of Malcolm over Christmas by the televised production of Menotti's opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. We sang in several performances produced by the school in the early 1960s, he as Kaspar and I as Balthazar. I believe that these were the first performances of the opera in this country. If that is the case, then Malcolm Roberts has a place in operatic history as the creator in Britain of the role of Kaspar.

Each summer we participated in concert performances in parks in and around Manchester, of either Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, or, as in June 1963, Wright and Forrest's Kismet. Malcolm and another young tenor, Ian Hanson, were singing two of the parts of the Muezzins' Call to Prayer in the early part of the musical when they both got the giggles, trying desperately to keep going and only just making it. The Principal, Hindley Taylor, was sitting on the front row of the audience, he too trying, none too successfully, to keep a straight face, as were we, the rest of the cast and chorus, behind them.