Joseph Hislop

Joseph Hislop was a Scottish tenor born in Edinburgh in 1884 and who died in Upper Largo, Fife, in 1977. His career, which spanned much of the first half of the twentieth century, took him to the leading opera houses of Europe and America, and he is remembered both for his stage performances and for an extensive discography.

He trained with Gillis Bratt in Stockholm, the city where he made his debut in 1914 as Faust at the Royal Swedish Opera. After five years in Scandinavia he spent a season in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo, and in 1920 he made his Covent Garden debut in La bohème; Puccini praised his Rodolfo with the phrase "my ideal Rodolfo". Between 1920 and 1921 he performed in Chicago and at the Manhattan Opera House in New York, after which he joined Antonio Scotti's American tour. In 1923 he sang at La Fenice in Venice and at the Teatro Regio in Turin, and he became the first British tenor to take a leading role at La Scala, as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor.

His legacy rests largely on his recordings: more than 120 discs for HMV and Pathé, among them outstanding versions of Edgardo and Faust. After retiring from the stage in 1937 he devoted himself to teaching in Stockholm, where his pupils included Birgit Nilsson and Jussi Björling. From 1947 he served as artistic adviser at Covent Garden and later at Sadler's Wells.