White, Willard (1946-…), is a Jamaican singer and actor who has won fame for his many stirring opera performances. White, a bass-baritone with a flexible voice, also made his mark as a fine oratorio singer in such works as The Dream of Gerontius, by Sir Edward Elgar.
Willard Wentworth White was born on Oct. 10, 1946, in St. Catherine, Jamaica. He studied at the Jamaican School of Music and then at the Juilliard School of Music, in New York City, to which he had won a scholarship. He made his operatic debut in 1974 in Washington, D.C., playing the part of Trulove in the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress. White began singing with the New York City Opera in the same year, appearing as Colline in the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème. Also in 1974, White made his first European appearance, for the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, Wales, singing the part of Osmin in the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio. This was followed by debuts with English National Opera at the Coliseum, London (1976), and with the companies at Glyndebourne, Sussex (1978), at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London (1978), and at the Salzburg Festival in Austria (1990).
The widely different operatic roles played by White reflect range of his talent. They include Seneca in The Coronation of Poppaea by Claudio Monteverdi, an Italian composer of the 1600’s; Wotan in the operas of the German composer Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle; and Don Diego in the opera L’Africaine by Giacomo Meyerbeer, a German composer of the 1800’s. In 1977, White created the role of Toussaint Louverture in an opera of the same name by the modern English composer David Blake. In 1986, White sang the part of Porgy in the Glyndebourne Festival Opera production of the American composer George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and repeated the role in 1992 at Covent Garden. White sang the title role in the opera Boris Godunov at the English National Opera in 1998.
White is also a talented actor. He won critical praise for his commanding presence as the central figure in William Shakespeare’s Othello, in 1989 with the United Kingdom’s Royal Shakespeare Company.
