Richard Conrad, a tenor who was plucked from obscurity by the acclaimed soprano Joan Sutherland to take part in a landmark 1963 recording, and who later overcame a throat injury suffered in an assault and found a successful third act producing lesser-known operas, died on Aug. 26 at his home in Eliot, Me. He was 84.

The cause was heart disease, his brother, Howard Conrad, said.

In 1961, Mr. Conrad, then a member of Boston Camerata, an early-music ensemble, gave a splendid performance of a florid aria from Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” in a concert at the Museum of Fine Arts. It attracted the attention of Ms. Sutherland, who was singing in Boston at the time.

“One of the players from the Camerata concert told her, ‘There’s a guy here who sings just like you,’” Mr. Conrad recalled in an interview in 1995 with The Boston Globe. He was referring to Ms. Sutherland’s technical expertise in bel canto opera, the style that flourished during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and was characterized by long vocal lines rich with passagework and coloratura embellishments.

Ms. Sutherland and the conductor Richard Bonynge, her husband and frequent collaborator, invited Mr. Conrad to audition two months later. He prepared two Handel arias.