Program: Tenor Steve Davislim

In August this year, we lost one of our most successful singers, in his prime.

Steve Davislim, who was acclaimed internationally and here in Australia for his versatile, mellifluous tenor voice, and loved widely for his warm, larger-than-life personality, died in Vienna on August 11 after a very short illness. He was just 57.

Mary Armour, his first music teacher who identified his musical talent when she was Director of Music at Melbourne's Essendon Grammar (P.E.G.S.) told me this week: "When I auditioned him in Grade 5 for the school choir, there was something different about Steve. He had an amazing ear and was innately musical and seemed to know instinctively what to do. I never had to tell him anything."

Conductor Simone Young collaborated on stage and recorded with Steve regularly over the past 25 years. They were working together in Berlin in May, preparing the role of Scrivener in Mussorgsky's Khovanschina when he became ill. "He had impeccable musicianship, impeccable artistry and a total commitment to [his] work. And of course he was a marvellous singer. His voice was moving, but it was also just beautiful to listen to."

Steve's first passion was the French horn which he played extremely well, but whilst studying at the VCA, he decided playing in an orchestra wasn't what he wanted to do, and he switched to studying voice, as a baritone.

It was his teacher Dame Joan Hammond who recognized he was a tenor. "She was a very special person," Steve recalled. "A very hard teacher but a loving teacher; she cared deeply for us, but she knew what was ahead and wanted to prepare us.

Steve landed on fertile soil when he became a member of the International Opera Studio in Zurich for two years, eventually becoming a highly valued member of Zurich Opera from 1994 to 2000. It was an innovative company that staged many new productions each year and attracted big-name conductors and singers. "I brushed shoulders with Mirella Freni and Nicolai Ghiaurov. My awe of them changed because I saw them there as working singers, with their colds, with their nerves. It was truly a family atmosphere in Zurich."

Soon Steve was singing leading roles himself in Zurich, going on to sing at the Salzburg Festival, La Scala, the Met, with Chicago Lyric, Covent Garden and back home for Opera Australia and Victorian Opera working with great conductors like Abbado, Chailly, Gergiev and Sir Colin Davis.

Lieder, art song, was another of his passions, and he had an extensive concert repertoire. He was a singer who needed new challenges and as a result had one of the broadest repertoires of his tenor contemporaries.

This is reflected in his discography that ranges from Bach to Michael Tippett and includes rarities like Szymanowski's Symphony No. 3 with Pierre Boulez, and the Gramophone Award-winning recording of scenes from Martinů's opera Juliette with Sir Charles Mackerras.

His last recording released this year was Poppaea by Michael Hersch, Steve playing the role of Nero as he had for the stage premiere in Basel in 2021.

Steve's last performances in Australia included an acclaimed Melbourne season of Idomeneo, a co-production with Victorian Opera and Opera Australia, the role of Loge with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Simone Young in Das Rheingold and Schumann's Dichterliebe with pianist Stefan Cassomenos for the Port Fairy Festival, and the Tasmanian Chamber Music Festival. He dedicated his encore, Schubert's An Die Musik, to his first teacher, Mary Armour.

Steve was born Steven Lim on 14 May 1967, in George Town, Penang. The family moved to Australia shortly after his birth and he grew up in Melbourne's west. Later he decided to change his name, adding his mum's name — Davis — to his fathers. "It makes Google searches very easy," he joked.

His mum, an Irish nurse, had met his father, a Chinese-Malaysian doctor, when his dad was studying at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. "They wanted to start a new life with their family in Australia."

Steve's maternal grandmother was an organist and pianist who had studied at the Royal College of Music in London but otherwise, Steve said, "There was no other musical talent in my family background."

Mind you Steve's young brother Garrie Davislim also became a very successful tenor, now based in Europe. "A genetic deformity," laughed Steve.

"As a little chap," recalled Mary Armour, "Steve loved his music. When he got into middle school and his voice broke, he was singing baritone and bass down to a low F. When the tenors in the choir were wobbly, he'd also help out singing the tenor part."

Steve remembered how good the school music program was. "Mary ran a tight ship and when I got to year 8, music was compulsory. The brass teacher checked out my lips and said: 'You're a horn player.' That was it."

"He took to the horn like a duck to water," remembers Mary.

"Dennis Brain was my horn idol. A wonderful innocence to his playing, a wonderful purity of sound. I was obsessed with the sound. I didn't like the German vibrato sound, that's why I liked Brain."

When he was 12, he went on a school excursion to see his first opera: Joan Sutherland singing Lucia. "I didn't know what opera was at the time, but that's when I had my first taste. At home it was always show music: South Pacific, Carousel. My dad loved musicals. I remember him playing Ezio Pinza singing Some Enchanted Evening."

At the Victorian College of the Arts Steve studied the horn with the aim of becoming a professional player. "I'd played all the major concertos by 16, and then realised there was not much more to play, and I didn't want to sit in an orchestra forever. Someone said that I should take singing lessons, and I thought 'Wow, that repertoire is enormous.'"

He'd never had a one-on-one singing lesson with a teacher but always said how lucky he was to learn with Dame Joan Hammond, the darling of Covent Garden and the Vienna State opera, whose recording of O Mio Babbino Caro sold over a million copies.

"Dame Joan helped me enormously at the beginning of my career. For me she had a fortitude in her dealings with every-day issues that are very necessary to survive the travel and stresses of performing. She would always sprinkle her lessons with personal anecdotes, especially during the war years where times in London were tough, singing in cold auditoriums with the constant fear of bombs falling, doing their own make-up and making do with whatever was available. This flexible attitude is one that helped me greatly as one is always confronted with difficult circumstances in the profession."

"Her fabulous voice was also an inspiration. She would often sing along, and you could see in her eyes that she longed to stand on the stage again. This love for the music and performance was highly inspiring."

Dame Joan was the one who pointed out he was a tenor. "I didn't really believe it at the time. It was a puzzle because I was singing low repertoire. She could hear it in the voice."

"But I didn't want to change. One reason I wanted to stay as a baritone was Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, whom I idolised for his singing of Lieder. I loved the simplicity of his singing and his interpretation of the words. Lieder is the most intimate magnifying glass to the soul that any singer can aspire to. It is just you, the pianist, the poet and the composer in an intimate setting that allows for infinite nuances to unfold at your whim."

"I felt as a tenor I'd be quite limited, that the baritone had a broader palette of colour to use, and tenors so often play lovers in opera, so I felt they were a bit two-dimensional. I wanted to play Iago. But I learnt to love being a tenor."

After graduating with honours from the VCA, Steve sang for three years with the Victorian State Opera. He was also a member of the Treason of Images Theatre Company, debuting with the latter as both Jove and Sylvia in La Calisto by Cavalli at the 1988 Melbourne Spoleto Fringe Festival.

Then he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award and he and his then Australian wife, oboist Emma Black, both received Australia Council scholarships to study overseas.

"Off we went freshly married on our European adventures. Emma wanted to study with Heinz Holliger. I didn't have a particular teacher in mind, but I knew I wanted to study lieder in Germany and soak up the influences and bring it back." said Steve. "That was my intention, but we got stuck."

He studied in Italy, Greece, Germany and finally Zurich with a diverse range of teachers.

"My formative time was in Greece with Cypriot baritone John Modenos. He was a great teacher. I learnt new rep and how to think differently."

The turning point was his tenure with Zurich Opera in the 1990s when he also studied lieder interpretation with the famous accompanist Irwin Gage.

By 2000 Steve was also making his first recordings, returning home to Australia regularly to perform and record a series of stellar albums with the Melba recordings label.

In 2005, and by then based with his family in Vienna, Steve received a call to sing his debut at La Scala. "A big deal and a big honour. It was the pinnacle for me. I was on a beach somewhere when my agent rang. Muti had just been thrown out and they'd rescheduled, and Daniel Harding was conducting Idomeneo, and they were desperate to have me."

He didn't know the role but flew to Milan and learnt it in 10 days. "I'd sung the first three performances before I suddenly realised what had happened. It was such a whirlwind."

Steve was already well-known in Europe but the opening night at La Scala was a surprise.

Director Luc Bondy's production was booed, but flowers fell at Steve's feet as he took his bow in a house where the audience can be notoriously hard to please. The 35-year-old tenor had made history.

"The role demands lyricism, pyrotechnic agility and profound dramatic weight," wrote Shirley Apthorp in The Australian. "Davislim combined all these qualities with dramatic charisma and exceptional musical intelligence. He made the ill-fated monarch's inner struggles utterly real and moved around La Scala's broad stage with leonine grace."

"At a restaurant with my wife after one of the shows," recalled Steve, "a fellow came up and said: 'I'm so glad Muti's gone and we have some different music and different artists, it was always the same.' When I went to leave, he'd paid for the whole table."

Steve appeared to make the gear change from opera to oratorio and recitals seamlessly, but said it wasn't easy.

"I remember Schwarzkopf saying she had to leave a certain amount of time between recitals and opera, and she was right. It's like a sportsman running 100 metres as opposed to a marathon. So, I have to plan my diary carefully."

"In opera you've got huge forces, and you have to concentrate on five things at once. In a recital it's internal, just you and the pianist. It's distilled, very concentrated and you're drawing the audience into you rather than going out to them."

When I interviewed him for ABC Classic in 2011, Steve gave some valuable advice for young singers. "There are many ways up the mountain. I think I'd say do what you think is right, don't sing beyond yourself. As one teacher said to me: Sing on the interest and not the capital and you'll have a long career."

Steve never listened to opera at home. He had a great love for classical jazz and chamber music, and he was an excellent cook. "I've lived in many different countries, so I cook lots of cuisines, improvise, mix and match."

He had a great gift for friendship and whenever he was home in Australia, his mates from Essendon Grammar would get together and support his concerts. He always kept in touch with Mary Armour too.

"I saw him a lot last year when he was home to sing Idomeneo with Victorian Opera, and the Dichterliebe for the Port Fairy Festival. He was staying with another of my boys, one of his class-mates and ex-choristers and would drop in for a chat. Much laughter, and stories. I feel so lucky that I had that time."

"I have lost a lifelong friend and past student, and the world has lost a unique voice. So much warmth in that voice; a voice like caramel, and he had a wicked sense of humour. We never lost touch even after he went to Europe, and I was able to share vicariously in his successes."

Mairi Nicolson presents Saturday Night at the Opera and The Opera Show on ABC Classic.