THE D'OYLY CARTE OPERA COMPANY

Warwick Gray as Guron in Princess Ida

Warwick Gray (1883-84)

[Born Portsmouth, Hampshire 23 Feb 1841, died Lancashire 1926]

After a brief military career in the Royal Marines, jobs in education and manufacturing, and some amateur concert performing, Frederick Warwick Gray turned professional in the early 1880s and in 1883 joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy, assuming the part of Private Willis in Iolanthe for the last weeks of the initial run. On January 5, 1884, he created the part of Guron in Princess Ida, playing it throughout its run, which ended in October. It was his only engagement with the D'Oyly Carte organization.

Later that year he appeared at Sanger's Amphitheatre in the pantomime, and in 1885 he formed and managed a juvenile opera company that, over the next five years, toured the country in a repertoire including La Fille de Madame Angot, Les Cloches de Corneville, and Billee Taylor. Gray occasionally appeared himself singing ballards and the "Sentry's Song" from Iolanthe. In 1890 he launched an adult company that toured a work called Black Diamonds for several seasons.

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