Davis Cunningham

Thomas Davis Cunningham (May 7, 1916 – June 19, 1984) was an American tenor whose career encompassed opera, musical theater, concert performance, and television over more than three decades. Born in the Philippines to an American military physician, Cunningham pursued formal vocal training at Wooster College and the Juilliard School before embarking on a professional career that would take him from Broadway to the nation's leading opera houses.

Cunningham's stage career began in 1939 when he made his Broadway debut in the musical Stars in Your Eyes, performing a number of small roles. He returned to Broadway two years later to play Jack in Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark. That same year he entered into a contract with the Philadelphia Opera Company as a principal tenor, though his operatic ambitions were interrupted when he was conscripted into the United States Air Force. He served as a lieutenant during World War II from 1941 to 1946, after which he resumed his performing career in operettas and musicals across the country. His final Broadway appearance came on December 27, 1954, when he created the role of Michele in the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street.

Cunningham made his operatic debut in 1949 with the Central City Opera, where he became a regular presence over the following years. In 1954 he joined the New York City Opera as a principal tenor, making his debut there in the title role of The Tales of Hoffmann. His subsequent roles with the company included Rodolfo in La bohème and Ernesto in Don Pasquale, both in 1954, followed by Prince Ramiro in La Cenerentola and Vašek in The Bartered Bride in 1955. In 1958 he took on the role of Hindley Earnshaw in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd's Wuthering Heights at the Santa Fe Opera.

Television became a significant part of Cunningham's career beginning in 1952, when he began appearing regularly on NBC Opera Theatre. His roles for that program included Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Prince Anatole in War and Peace, Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande, and Belmonte in The Abduction from the Seraglio. In 1960 he portrayed Mario Cavaradossi in a production of Tosca for ABC television.

As a concert performer, Cunningham appeared in orchestral programs featuring rarely performed repertoire. He sang Nadir in a concert performance of Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles in 1953 and Fernando in Enrique Granados's Goyescas in 1956. In 1964 he performed the role of Chevalier de la Force in the New York premiere of Dialogues of the Carmelites. Among his other notable concert engagements, he performed show tunes with the New York Philharmonic under Richard Rodgers in 1954, and in 1959 served as tenor soloist in Handel's Messiah at Carnegie Hall under conductor Eugene Ormandy with the Philadelphia Orchestra, alongside soprano Eileen Farrell, contralto Martha Lipton, baritone William Warfield, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. His final public performance took place in 1973 with the Cincinnati Symphony under conductor James Levine.

In the early 1970s Cunningham joined the voice faculty at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He relocated to San Diego in 1974, where he maintained a private teaching studio until his death from a heart attack ten years later, on June 19, 1984.