Ralph Mason

Ralph Mason (born John Francis Mason in Brighton 1st September 1938, died Cardiff 10th August 2016) appeared in Coronation Street in August 1975 as Major Blake, an army officer with the Lancashire Fusiliers who attended Albert Tatlock's 80th birthday party.

His principle career was as a tenor singer, beginning professionally in 1959 after national service in the British Army where he was private secretary to Field Marshal Montgomery .That year he joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company where he met his first wife, singer Anne Sessions who he married in 1961, and then from 1963 to 1965 he appeared on stage in My Fair Lady both in the West End and on tour. He rejoined D'Oyly Carte for eight more years thereafter during which time he was promoted to Principle Tenor singing in Cox and Box, Trial by Jury, The Sorcerer, H.M.S. Pinafore, Patience, Iolanthe, Princess Ida, Ruddigore, Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers. It was after a move to Bramhall that he obtained a new agent who got him a "straight" acting part in the Street and an unknown BBC2 production but he rejoined D'Oyly Carte for another brief period after that and then, from 1977, the Welsh National Opera where he remained until his retirement in 2003.

He made several recordings as part of the D'Oyly Carte and appeared in a 1981 BBC2 presentation of the Welsh National Opera production of Fidelio and Radio 3 production of Beatrice and Benedict in 1994.

In his later years he developed Parkinson's Disease but wrote an autobiography, which he published in 2014 as an iBook, The Autobiography of Ralph Mason, and which is available online as Pass the Mustard.

External pages
Wikipedia page for Ralph Mason