Willard White

Early life

He was born into a Jamaican family in Kingston. His father was a dockworker, his mother a housewife. White first began to learn music by listening to the radio and singing Nat King Cole songs. He was also inspired by the American singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. White was a founding member of the Jamaica Folk Singers, sang with the Jamaica Amateur Operatic Society and trained at the Jamaican School of Music.

In a visit to Jamaica, Evelyn Rothwell, the wife of conductor Sir John Barbirolli, heard him sing and suggested that he go to study in London. Instead, his father bought him a one-way ticket to New York City, because "the flight was cheaper". He won a scholarship and continued his studies with bass Giorgio Tozzi at the Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, he was selected by Maria Callas to participate in the master classes she gave there from 1971 to 1972.

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 Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House, Opéra Bastille, the opera houses of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the major European cities as well as the Festivals at Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, 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. He has starred in non-singing roles, such as a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Othello (1989), with Ian McKellen as Iago and Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona. He sang Porgy in the Glyndebourne production (1993) of the opera Porgy and Bess. Both productions were directed by Trevor Nunn and both were videotaped for television. White appeared with Cantamus Girls Choir in Harrogate in 2004.

He sang the role of Vodnik in Antonín Dvořák opera Rusalka several times, including in a Stefan Herheim production in 2012 at La Monnaie in Brussels and in 2004 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Awards and personal life

In 1977, the first stereo recording of Porgy and Bess, conducted by Lorin Maazel, in which White sang the role of Porgy, received a Grammy Award. White himself received the Gold Musgrave Medal of The Institute of Jamaica. In 1995 he was awarded the CBE and he was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2004 Birthday Honours. In 2000, White was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit (OM), the third highest honour in the Jamaican honours system, for eminent international distinction in the performing arts. This entitles him to the prenominal style "The Hon".

White lives in Lewisham, South East London.

Selected discography