Willard White
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Sir Willard Wentworth White CBE (born October 10, 1946) is a Jamaican-born British bass-baritone.
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[edit] Early life
He was born into a poor but supportive Jamaican family in Kingston. His father was a dockworker, his mother was illiterate. 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. He 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 passing visit to Jamaica, Evelyn Rothwell (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, because "the flight was cheaper". He won a scholarship and continued his studies with celebrated bass Giorgio Tozzi at the Juilliard School.
[edit] Career
He made his debut 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 appeared earlier in the same year in 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 explored less traditional, and in many cases, completely unfamiliar territory by appearing as Bluebeard in Bartok'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 György 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 (film).
Among his most memorable roles is Mephistopheles in The Damnation of Faust.
A talented actor, he has starred in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play Othello (1990), 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 videotaped for television.
White also appeared with Cantamus Girls Choir in Harrogate, 2004.
[edit] Awards
In 1977, a recording of Porgy and Bess, in which White sang the role of Porgy, received the 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 Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2004. In 2000, Sir Willard White was awarded the Order of Merit (OM), the third highest honour in the Jamaican honours system, for eminent international distinction in the performing arts.
White is the father of seven children (Jana White, Clara White, Debra White, Johnathon White, Rahl White, Jay White and Daniel White [missionary to the Belgian people]) and lives in Lewisham, London.
[edit] Selected discography
- Porgy and Bess with Leona Mitchell, Barbara Hendricks, Florence Quivar, and others, the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Lorin Maazel. This is the first truly complete recording of Porgy and Bess ever made. It is currently out of print. Decca (London Records in the U.S.)
- The Paul Robeson Legacy. a collection of spirituals and ballads made famous by Paul Robeson, arranged specially for Willard White. Linn Records
- Willard White - A Gala Celebration: Carl Davis: Three Spirituals, On The Beach (Whitman), Copland: Old American Songs, opera arias by Mozart & Gounod, Bizet's Pearl Fishers Duet, & Broadway numbers including Some Enchanted Evening and Ol' Man River. With Bonaventura Bottone, tenor, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Carl Davis, conductor. RLCD 204
- Porgy and Bess with Cynthia Haymon, Harolyn Blackwell, The Glyndebourne Chorus and London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle. EMI.
- Mozart: Requiem with Barbara Bonney, Anne Sofie von Otter, Hans Peter Blochwitz, The Monteverdi Choir, The English Baroque Soloists conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
- Handel: Messiah with Yvonne Kenny, Jean Rigby and Thomas Randle, with the Royal Choral Society and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Owain Arvel Hughes
