OSBORN, LEONARD

At first an amateur singer in his native London, Leonard Osborn worked as a chemist in a silk-printing mill before joining the professional chorus of D’Oyly Carte in the mid-1930s. After his début with the company in a small part in Yeomen of the Guard in 1937, he had by 1939 sung The Defendant in Trial By Jury, Francesco in The Gondoliers, and Leonard Meryll in Yeomen. An RAF flight-lieutenant during the Second World War, in 1946 Osborn returned to D’Oyly Carte where, until his retirement in 1959, his many role included Tolloller in Iolanthe, Fairfax in Yeomen, Marco in The Gondoliers, Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore, Nanki-Poo in Mikado, Frederic in Pirates, and the Duke of Dunstable in Patience.

Albums featuring this artist are available for download from ClassicsOnline.com
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN (The Best of)	8.111311-12
SULLIVAN: Gondoliers (The) (D'Oyly Carte) (1950)	8.110209-10
SULLIVAN: H.M.S. Pinafore (D'Oyly Carte) (1948)	8.110175
SULLIVAN: Iolanthe (D'Oyly Carte) (1951)	8.110231-32
SULLIVAN: Mikado (The) (D'Oyly Carte) (1950)	8.110176-77
SULLIVAN: Patience (D'Oyly Carte) (1951)	8.110233
SULLIVAN: Pirates of Penzance / Trial by Jury (D'Oyly Carte) (1949)	8.110196-97
SULLIVAN: Princess Ida (Morgan, Round, Godfrey) (1954)	8.110317-18
SULLIVAN: Ruddigore (D'Oyly Carte) (1950)	8.110295
SULLIVAN: Yeomen of the Guard (D'Oyly Carte) (1950)	8.110293-94