Willard White

Willard White made his Royal Opera debut in 1996 as Timur (Turandot). Since then he has sung Il Commendatore (Don Giovanni), Trinity Moses (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), Klingsor (Parsifal), Don Fernando (Fidelio), Priest Fotis (The Greek Passion), Les 4 Diables (Les contes d’Hoffman) and the title role (Bluebeard’s Castle) for The Royal Opera. Willard was born in Jamaica, where he commenced his musical training at the Jamaican School of Music and then went on to the Juilliard School in New York. Since his operatic debut with the New York City Opera in 1974, he has sung regularly at the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, English National Opera, San Francisco Opera, the opera houses of Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Geneva, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris, and at the Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg festivals. He was awarded the CBE in 1995 and was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2004, he was named Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in France in 2023 for his contributions to opera, both on the French and international stages.