'Billy Budd' debuts

Last Saturday's premiere of 'Billy Budd' in Santa Fe presented the opportunity of three major debuts for Askonas Holt artists.

The opera was being performed for the first time in Santa Fe, with William Burden singing his first Captain Vere, Peter Rose making his Santa Fe debut as Claggart and Teddy Tahu Rhodes making both his first appearance in Santa Fe and his debut in the title role.

The first reviews hail the achievements of both the festival and these three marvellous artists. Burden's first Vere "beautifully showed professional confidence, emotional anguish, intellectual rigor, and conflict between love and duty; he broke our hearts" (The New Mexican). Peter Rose has sung Claggart in Cologne, Hamburg, Munich and Vienna and now for the first time in the States. For The New Mexican, his "Stygian but agile bass, his burly figure, and the demonic concentration he could portray in his eyes, perfectly limned Claggart's dark hatred of anything light and bright". Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who earlier this year was the subject of an extensive profile in Opera News, is garnering wonderful notices for his first Billy: "a virile, lovable Billy" ... "The voice has an intense and very masculine burr at its core, and is strongly focused and good-sized without being unwieldy. The singer's honed physique and easy grace in the rigging showed him to be quite the able-bodied seaman."

Photo credit: Ken Howard @ Santa Fe Opera

16 July, 2008

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William Burden Peter Rose Teddy Tahu Rhodes

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