Without a resident theatre of its own, the British National Opera Company toured the major cities and towns of the UK giving short seasons over the next five years. When it was possible Tudor appeared while also undertaking concert engagements of his own. He appeared with Florence Austral singing duet's from Wagner's “Tristan and Isolde”, Siegried and Gotterdammerung in the London Symphony Orchestra's first concert of its 1924-25 series.. With so many opera premiers to their credit the BNOC was not a company to rest on their laurels and gave the first performance of Gustav Holst's “At the Boar's Head” in Manchester on April 3 1925. Tudor was again assigned the tenor role with Constance Willis and Norman Allin in other leading parts.
Macolm Sarjent was also the conductor on this prestigious occasion. Frederick Austin was present at a Wigmore Hall concert on December 14 1925 and the concert was devoted entirely to music by Bernard van Dieren, including selections from his opera “The Tailor”, sung by Megan Foster and John Goss with Kathleen Long, piano and chamber orchestral accompaniment.
The ensemble was conducted by a young man named John Barbirolli. Austin was strongly impressed by Barbirolli's conducting and offered him a junior conductorship with the BNOC which he accepted. With a minimum of rehearsal he found himself soon on stage.
At times he succeeded, as in January 1927 when the company performed at Golder's Green Hippodrome and he conducted “Romeo and Juliet” which The Times described as “a spirited, expressive and precise performance”. Also “Madam Butterly” on the Saturday of that week which was a box office sell out and “With no one on stage or in the pit afraid of being sentimental – least of all the conductor!” Tudor and Miriam Licette sang the leading roles in both operas. The Birmingham Post critic visited their performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre in the spring of 1928 and “Die Meistersinges” came in for a literary thrashing. When “Aida” was performed on Easter Monday with Frank Mullings as Radames, the critic kept up the hostility. “Had the conductor been followed closely, we might had had a memorable performance, but it did not go at all comfortably.” On the Saturday that ended the season, Frederick Austin made a curtain speech with expressed doubts of the future of the BNOC unless it could be helped financially by Sir Thomas Beecham's Imperial League of Opera scheme which advocated public subscription. This did not materialise and the end came for the company on April 16 1929 when they were £5,000 in debt. The Conservative Government, under Stanley Baldwin, extracted their necessary entertainment tax from the box office takings which equated to £17,000. In the 1934-35 season Sadler's Wells was exempt from paying this tax. British National Opera Company employed most of the leading British and British-based singers and conductors of that time, including conductors John Barbirolli, Adrian Boult, Aylmer Buesst, Hamilton Harty, Gervase Hughes and Malcolm Sargent, and singers Agnes Nicholls, Florence Austral, Joseph Hislop, Edward Johnson, Dinh Gilly, Harold Williams, Norman Allin, Robert Radford, Dora Labbett, Herbert Heyner and Heddle Nash, among others. The BNOC effectively re-formed as the Covent Garden English Opera Company in September 1929, with Barbirolli as its musical director, and continued under that name until 1938.
Tudor said in 1928, “Eventually opera will become a paying proposition, little as may be the signs of an improvement at the present time. It is hopeless, I think, to rely upon the chance of state aid. There are too many schemes clamouring for government subsidies for a “mere art like music” ever to be consider in high quarters. It might be different if opera appealed to the upper ten, those people who could, if they chose, bring influence to bear on the politicians, but opera to them is merely a fashionable feature of the London season, and they care little about supporting native art or native artists.”
Temporarily absent from the operatic stage, Tudor accepted more concert work which featured a whole range of performance techniques from operatic excerpts and oratorio to ballads and song-cycles. His recording work, particularly for HMV was prolific during this time. When Sir Thomas Beecham organised and conducted a Delius Festival consisting of six concerts given in the presence of the invalid composer. The final one was devoted to the “Mass of Life” with Tudor as soloist, alongside Miriam Licette, Astra Desmond and Roy Henderson. Also in 1928 Tudor returned to the United States for another extensive tour as guest artists at various opera houses in addition to concert bookings. However, it was a gruelling tour and the critic in Milwaukee commented, “Mr Davies who has won fame in his native country and approval in this, was heard in airs from the operas and concert songs…the first half of his programme was not well sung….the voice was married, not greatly, but annoyingly by a persistent little vibrato…later he displayed his true merit, “Celeste Aida”…the brave tune was beautifully delivered and from then on the tenor was as listeners wanted him to be.”
After his return to the UK in 1930, Tudor learned of the intensive project to rebuild the Sadler's Wells Theatre which had been in existence in Clerkenwell, London as far back as 1683. However, by the end of the 19th century it had become a music hall, followed by a cinema before it closed in 1915. By 1925 the proprietor of the Old Vic theatre, Lilian Baylis felt that her opera and drama productions needed to expand. She invited the Duke of Devonshire to make a public appeal for funds to set up a charitable foundation to buy Sadler's Wells for the nation. The appeal committee included such diverse and influential figures as Winston Churchill, Stanley Baldwin, G. K. Chesterton, John Galsworthy, Dame Ethel Smyth and Sir Thomas Beecham. It was not long before enough money had been amassed to buy the freehold.