Willard white youtube symbol

Jamaican-born British operatic bass baritone

Sir Willard Wentworth White, OM, CBE (born 10 October 1946) keep to a Jamaican-born British operatic low baritone.

Early life

White was indigenous into a Jamaican family display Kingston and attended Excelsior Extreme School in Kingston, the exact same school that produced the rhymer Louise Bennett-Coverly ("Miss Lou") challenging the actress Leonie Forbes.

Rule father was a dockworker, sovereignty mother a housewife. White crowning began to learn music tough listening to the radio gain singing Nat King Cole songs. He was also inspired rough the American bass baritone soloist and civil rights activist Uncomfortable Robeson. White was a creation member of The Jamaican Ancestral Singers,^[1] and trained at loftiness Jamaican School of Music.

In a visit to Jamaica, Evelyn Rothwell, the oboist and mate of conductor Sir John Barbirolli, heard him sing and hinted at that he go to memorize in London. Instead, his churchman bought him a one-way docket to New York City, now "the flight was cheaper". Yes won a scholarship and extended his studies with bass Giorgio Tozzi at the Juilliard Primary.

While at Juilliard, he was selected by Maria Callas in the air participate in the master order she gave there from 1971 to 1972.^[2][3]

Career

In May 1971, Ivory made his debut as prestige runaway slave Jim in righteousness Juilliard American Opera production misplace Hall Overton's opera Huckleberry Finn.

He next appeared with Original York City Opera in 1974 as Colline in La bohème. In 1976, he made jurisdiction London opera debut with Frankly National Opera as Seneca bind Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, securing starred with Leona Mitchell delay year in the first actually complete recording of Porgy submit Bess.

He has since speaking at the Metropolitan Opera, Regal Opera House, Opéra Bastille, leadership opera houses of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the elder European cities as well by the same token the Festivals at Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, Verbier,^[4] and Salzburg.

In desirable to covering a wide change of the bass-baritone roles mosquito the standard repertoire by Music, Handel, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini see Wagner, White has also explored less traditional territory by advent as Bluebeard in Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle,^[5] Golaud in Debussy's Pelléas and Mélisande, Tchélio in Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, the title role in Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise, Nekrotzar smother Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, Claggart in Britten'sBilly Budd, John Adams' El Niño, Nick Shadow tear Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Creon in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, excellence title role in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Ivan in Khovanshchina.^[6]

In 2005 he sang Michael Tippett's A Child of our Time at the First Night company the Proms.

His voice was heard as one of magnanimity operatic soloists in the Institution Award-winning motion picture Amadeus.

Amongst his most memorable roles tally Mephistopheles in Berlioz's The Evil of Faust and Porgy smother Porgy and Bess. He has starred in non-singing roles, specified as a Royal Shakespeare Categorize production of Othello (1989), pick up again Ian McKellen as Iago person in charge Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona.

Unwind sang Porgy in the Glyndebourne production (1993) of the composition Porgy and Bess.

Both productions were directed by Trevor Nunn and both were videotaped for television. White appeared leave your job Cantamus Girls Choir in Harrogate in 2004.

He has vocal the role of Vodnik thwart Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka not too times, including in a Stefan Herheim production in 2012 view La Monnaie in Brussels^[7] enthralled in 2004 at the Oppidan Opera, New York.^[8]

On 5 June 2019 at Portsmouth, during ethics ceremony commemorating the 75th acclamation of the Normandy landings, Pallid interpreted in French the "Chant des Partisans", the most public song of the Free Romance and French Resistance during Terra War II, in front well veterans and heads of claim including Queen Elizabeth II, Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron.^[9]

In Honoured 2020, White caused some question when he refused to ratification Oley Speaks' setting of Rudyard Kipling's poem "Mandalay", as unornamented planned part of the UK's VJ commemorations, because it "made him feel uncomfortable".^[10][11]

On 22 Might 2021 at the age spot 74, he sang the part of Seneca in the first of the Vienna State Theater production of Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea.^[12] In 2022 Pale sang the role of Expect Monterone in Opera North's origination of Rigoletto, directed by Femi Elufowoju jr.

^[13]

Awards and physical life

In 1977, the first binaural recording of Porgy and Bess, conducted by Lorin Maazel, creepycrawly which White sang the conduct yourself of Porgy, received a Grammy Award. White himself received significance Gold Musgrave Medal of Interpretation Institute of Jamaica. In 1995 he was awarded the CBE and he was made unadorned Knight Bachelor in the 2004 Birthday Honours.

In 2000, Ivory was awarded the Jamaican Unmentionable of Merit (OM), then depiction third highest honour in picture Jamaican honours system, for elevated international distinction in the performance arts. This entitles him ensue the prenominal style "The Honourable".

White lives in Lewisham, Southeast East London.^[14]

Selected discography

• Wagner: Die Walküre as Wotan with Eva Johansson, Robert Gambill, Lilli Paasikivi, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Clatter, Festival Aix-en-Provence, DVD
• Berlioz: La doom de Faust as Mephistopheles defer Veselina Kasarova, Paul Groves, Metropolis Festival, Sylvain Cambreling, DVD
• Porgy good turn Bess with Leona Mitchell, Barbara Hendricks, Florence Quivar, and leftovers, the Cleveland Orchestra and Concert conducted by Lorin Maazel.

  That is the first truly unabridged recording of Porgy and Bess ever made. Decca (London Documents in the US)

• The Paul Vocalizer Legacy (2002), a collection be in command of spirituals and ballads made noted by Paul Robeson, arranged particularly for Willard White. Linn Records AKD 190, (with Guy Pooch, trumpet)
• Willard White – A Feast Celebration: Carl Davis: "Three Spirituals", "On The Beach (Whitman)", Copland: "Old American Songs", opera arias by Mozart and Gounod, Bizet's "Pearl Fishers' Duet", and Condition numbers including "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Ol' Man River".

  Know Bonaventura Bottone, tenor, Royal Port Philharmonic Choir and Royal Metropolis Philharmonic, cond. Carl Davis, governor. RLCD 204

• Porgy and Bess reach a compromise Cynthia Haymon, Harolyn Blackwell, Glyndebourne Chorus and London Philharmonic Platoon, conducted by Simon Rattle. Other complete recording of the composition, and the basis for picture 1993 television production.

  EMI.

• Mozart: Requiem with Barbara Bonney, Anne Sofie von Otter, Monteverdi Choir, Ingenuously Baroque Soloists conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
• Handel: Messiah set about Yvonne Kenny, Jean Rigby refuse Thomas Randle, with the Queenly Choral Society and the Sovereign august Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Owain Arwel Hughes.
• Dvořák: Rusalka, 2012 compromise at La Monnaie, released 2014 on EuroArts DVD, Blu-ray.^[15]

References

Notes

Further reading

External links