page_title: Sims Reeves
section_title: Oratorio and cantata
hierarchical_section_title: Sims Reeves / Oratorio and cantata
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Sims Reeves&#32;– British opera singer
context_page_description: John Sims Reeves, usually called simply Sims Reeves, was the foremost English operatic, oratorio and ballad tenor vocalist of the mid-Victorian era.
  Reeves began his singing career in 1838 but continued his vocal studies until 1847. He soon established himself on the opera and concert stage and became known for his interpretation of ballads. He continued singing through the 1880s and later taught and wrote about singing.
context_section_description: In May 1862 at St James's Hall, Reeves took part in what he believed was the first complete performance in England of the St Matthew Passion of J. S. Bach. This was under William Sterndale Bennett, with Mme Sainton-Dolby, and Willoughby Weiss. Of this performance Reeves (who usually respected a composer's scoring absolutely) wrote:
  
  'The tenor part... is in many places so unvocal, and the intervals are so awkward to take, that I was obliged to re-note it: without, of course, disturbing the accents or making it in any way unsuitable to the existing harmony. As soon as I had finished my work, to which I had devoted the greatest possible care, I submitted it to Bennett, who, except in one place, approved of all that I had done; and it was my version of the tenor part which was sung at Bennett's memorable performance, and which is still sung even to this day.'
  In Michael Costa's second oratorio for Reeves, Naaman (first performed autumn 1864), the soloists were Reeves, Adelina Patti (her first appearance in oratorio), Miss Palmer, and Santley.  The quartet "Honour and Glory" was repeated by immediate and spontaneous demand. Both oratorios probably owed their original success, and later comparative obscurity, to the fact that Reeves was their ideal interpreter, and with changing vocal fashions no successor could replace him adequately.  In 1869 Reeves, Santley and Tietjens sang in the premiere of Arthur Sullivan's cantata The Prodigal Son, at the Worcester Festival. Santley considered Reeves's performance of the passage "I will arise and go to my father" a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Reeves also sang in the premiere of Sullivan's oratorio, The Light of the World, together with Tietjens, Trebelli, and Santley.
  Reeves claimed close and primary association with several of the great tenor leads in the oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn.  The songs "Men, Brothers and Fathers, Hearken to me" (from St Paul), and "The Enemy has Said" and "Sound an Alarm" (Judas Maccabaeus) were particular favourites, and his friend Rev Archer Gurney also extolled his "Waft her, angels" (Jephtha), his Samson and his Acis ("Love in her eyes sits playing").
caption: "To Arthur from his Prodigal Son"
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