Dunn took part in a broadcast of English
madrigals for the BBC, subsequently aired on French radio in November 1925, with Kathleen Vincent, Mona Benson and Frederick Woodhouse. He sang with
Nigel Playfair's company at the
Lyric Hammersmith, participating in rarely heard works such as
Idomeneo. Having produced
Bastien and Bastienne at the
Royal Academy of Music in London, he and Frederick Woodhouse, without any backing in 1930 formed the
Intimate Opera Company which revived several 18th century English operas, In the US he was seen as Thomas in
Thomas and Sally on
Broadway at the
Little Theatre on 4 January 1938 with the Intimate Opera Company, and appeared in other plays on Broadway that month, including
Peggy Perkins,
The Brickdust Man,
True Blue, or The Press Gang, and
Don Quixote; he arranged or translated several of them. At the
Royal Academy of Music in 1935 he was responsible for stage management, costumes and scenery for
The Magic Flute and the translation of
Mozart and Salieri, conducted by
William Alwyn and the following year directed
Falstaff at the Royal Academy, conducted by
John Barbirolli. In 1936 he also appeared in the first performances in Cambridge and London of
Vaughan Williams's
The Poisoned Kiss; and later the composer agreed for the conductor to approach Dunn about revising the libretto for a putative radio broadcast in 1938. He appeared in early British television broadcasts of operas, such as
Dibdin's
Lionel and Clarissa and Méhul's
Le jeune sage et le vieux fou in 1937. Before the Second World War, Dunn provided librettos for
Brian Easdale and
Herbert Murrill, and later for
English Eccentrics,
Julius Caesar Jones and
Dunstan and the Devil for
Malcolm Williamson. Grove commented that his "lines are always musically phrased, apt for stage effect and endlessly witty in rhyme and pun". In an article about his work on
Murder in the Cathedral in 1962 Dunn set out the three objectives "of the highest importance in making an English version of any opera"; that "the words should be as easy as possible to sing, with the vowels at the extremities of the registers as near a possible to the vowels of the original stresses and note-values should be scrupulously retained, in recitative as well as arioso; and that they should never be altered or modified except when there is no other way to fulfil the demands of the third objective". and
Saul and David. For his translation of Pizzetti's
Assassinio nella cattedrale in 1962, he first discussed his approach with
T. S. Eliot, on whose
play Alberti Castelli's libretto had been based, and described the result as "Re-translated into English by Geoffrey Dunn who has used, wherever possible, T. S. Eliot's own wording.". As a producer and director his work included
Antony Hopkins's
Lady Rohesia at Sadler's Wells in 1947,
Don Giovanni in 1947 and
Dido and Aeneas in early 1951. He translated and produced ''
Il trionfo dell'onore'' by Alessandro Scarlatti at the
Fortune Theatre, conducted by
Stanford Robinson with
April Cantelo and
Marjorie Thomas among the cast. Dunn appeared with the
Players' Theatre company during World War 2, where his songs included 'I don't mind Flies', 'My Son My Son' and 'That is Love'. In 1942 he appeared with
Vida Hope in a melodrama
The Streets of London. He appeared alongside
Ian Wallace and
Alastair Sim in
James Bridie's
The Forrigan Reel at Sadler's Wells in 1944. Shakespearean roles include Malvolio in a television production of
Twelfth Night starring
Barbara Lott as Viola in 1950, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in an audio recording of
Henry V (1967) with
Ian Holm as the king. He gave up singing to concentrate on acting but appeared as Cardinal Pirelli in the original production of the musical
Valmouth in 1958. Terpnos in
Quo Vadis in the
MGM blockbuster from 1951, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1964 TV adaptation of
Victoria Regina, and Lory in the 1966
Jonathan Miller adaptation of
Alice in Wonderland. ==References==