Career
In May 1971, White made his debut as the runaway slave Jim in the Juilliard American Opera production of Hall Overton's opera, Huckleberry Finn. He next appeared with New York City Opera in 1974 as Colline in La bohème. In 1976, he made his London opera debut with English National Opera as Seneca in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, having starred with Leona Mitchell that year in the first truly complete recording of Porgy and Bess. He has since sung at the Met, Covent Garden, Paris Bastille, the opera houses of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the major European cities as well as the Festivals at Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg.
In addition to covering a wide range of the bass-baritone roles in the standard repertoire by Mozart, Handel, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini and Wagner, White has also explored less traditional territory by appearing as Bluebeard in Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, 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 in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, Claggart in Britten's Billy Budd, John Adams’ El Niño, Nick Shadow in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Creon in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, the title role in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Ivan in Khovanshchina.
In 2005 he sang Michael Tippett's A Child of our Time at the First Night of the Proms. His latest CD, entitled My Way, is on the Sony label.
His voice was heard as one of the operatic soloists in the Academy Award-winning motion picture Amadeus.
Among his most memorable roles are Mephistopheles in Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust and Porgy in Porgy and Bess.
A talented actor in non-singing roles as well, he has starred in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play Othello (1989), with Ian McKellen as Iago and Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona, and the Glyndebourne production (1993) of the opera Porgy and Bess. Both productions were directed by Trevor Nunn and both were videotaped for television. White also appeared with Cantamus Girls Choir in Harrogate, 2004.
Read more about this topic: Willard White
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