Eric Ronald Dowd (1914-1990), tenor, was born on 23 February 1914 at Camperdown, Sydney, third surviving son of Victorian-born Robert Henry Dowd, railway fitter, and his wife Henrietta, née Jenkins, a pianist who was born in New South Wales. 　　Enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force on 9 March 1942, Dowd served as a lance sergeant with the 1st Advanced Reinforcement Depot in Papua and New Guinea and on Morotai, before being discharged on 16 January 1946 in Australia. He began a singing career, travelling to Japan with a civilian entertainment unit. In 1948, following a chance meeting with Henry Krips, he sang the title role in Perth in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann; he performed it again in 1949 in Melbourne with Gertrude Johnson’s Australian National Theatre Movement. He later sang successfully with Clarice Lorenz’s National Opera of New South Wales (Australia) in Sydney, in La Traviata, Fidelio, Tannhäuser and Arthur Benjamin’s The Devil Take Her. In 1954 and 1955 he sang and broadcast in New Zealand. Late in 1955 he left for Britain and joined the Sadler’s Wells Company.