page_title: Derek Oldham
section_title: D'Oyly Carte and musical comedy years
hierarchical_section_title: Derek Oldham / Life and career / D'Oyly Carte and musical comedy years
caption_attribution_description: English: Winnie Melville, Mrs Derek Oldham oil on canvas 112.4 x 87 cm signed b.l.: de Laszlo / 1920
context_page_description: Derek Oldham was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
  After performing in concerts as a boy soprano and working as a bank clerk, Oldham began a professional performing career in 1914. With the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Scots Guards, serving with valour. After the war, he joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, singing the tenor leads in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas for three years. He then starred in musicals and operettas in the West End in the 1920s, including Madame Pompadour, The Merry Widow, Rose-Marie and The Vagabond King. He returned to the D'Oyly Carte for brief periods from 1929 to 1937.
  Oldham continued singing, recording and acting through the 1940s, also appearing in several films. He concentrated on legitimate theatre in the 1950s, acting until the age of 70. He maintained a lifelong interest in Gilbert and Sullivan, serving as an officer of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. He finally retired to Hampshire during the last ten years of his life.
context_section_description: Oldham was demobilised in July 1919 and joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company the following month, when the company opened its first London season in over a decade. He immediately assumed the leading Gilbert and Sullivan tenor roles of Alexis in The Sorcerer, Lord Tolloller in Iolanthe, Cyril in Princess Ida, Nanki-Poo in The Mikado, Colonel Fairfax in The Yeomen of the Guard, and Marco in The Gondoliers. The following year, he also took on the roles of Ralph Rackstraw in H.M.S. Pinafore, Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance, and Richard Dauntless in Ruddigore. In 1921 he exchanged Cyril for Prince Hilarion in Princess Ida.
  Oldham left the D'Oyly Carte company in 1922 to star in a great number of musicals and operettas during the 1920s at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and other West End theatres. His first musical was Whirled into Happiness at the Lyric Theatre, as Horace Wiggs, where his leading lady was his future wife, Winnie Melville. They married in 1923. She later joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a principal soprano. Oldham wrote, "The sheltered, almost student life of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company gave place to the hard glitter and luxury of the West End theatre – a world of restaurants, supper parties, and all the trappings that went with London theatrical life between the two wars". Other musicals in which Oldham starred included Madame Pompadour (1923, as Rene), The Merry Widow (1923, as Camille), and Rose-Marie (1925, as Jim). In 1927, Oldham and Melville starred together in the European première of The Vagabond King, he as François Villon, and she as Katherine de Vaucelles. They separated in 1933 and later divorced, and she died in 1937.
  Oldham returned several times to D'Oyly Carte, appearing in the 1929–30 season and on tour in his old roles of Ralph, Frederic, Tolloller, Hilarion, Nanki-Poo, Fairfax, and Marco. In the 1934–35 season, he played these roles on the company's first major American tour in the 20th century. In 1936, during the company's season at Sadler's Wells, he played Hilarion, and he was leading tenor in the 1936–37 season, which included another long American tour. Oldham's presence was a condition demanded by the American promoters. During this tour he and Sylvia Cecil were excused by the company for one night to sing a program of classical and popular favorites, including "Prithee, pretty maiden" from Patience, the evening before President Roosevelt's 2nd inauguration, at a party at the White House.
caption: Winnie Melville (Philip Alexius de László, 1920)
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