English opera singer Peter Pears was BOTD in 1910. Born in Farnham, Surrey to a middle-class family, he studied music at Oxford University and the Royal College of Music. In 1937, he met composer Benjamin Britten, with whom he formed a lifelong personal and professional relationship. At the outbreak of World War Two, they moved to New York, living briefly at January House in Brooklyn, a queer artists’ conclave with housemates Gypsy Rose Lee, W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers and Paul and Jane Bowles. Unimpressed with bohemian life, they returned to England in 1942, where Pears joined the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company. He became a star as the lead in Britten’s 1945 opera Peter Grimes, playing a tortured, possibly homosexual fisherman who is shunned by his community. He became one of the most celebrated tenors of his generation, originating roles written for him by Pears – many with homoerotic themes – including Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville‘s novella; Death in Venice, an adaptation of Thomas Mann‘s novel; and War Requiem, featuring the war poetry of Wilfred Owen. He also co-founded and managed the Aldeburgh Festival, a classical music festival in Britten’s childhood home in Suffolk. Though devoted to each other, Pears looked the other way discreetly as Britten pursued a series of troubling, erotically-charged friendships with pre-pubescent boys. After Britten’s death in 1976, Pears received a condolence note from Queen Elizabeth II, thought to be the first Royal acknowledgement of a same-sex relationship. He died in 1986, aged 75, and was buried beside Britten in Aldeburgh.