Roderick Williams is an exceptionally versatile artist whose intelligent musicality is admired in music from Monteverdi to Maxwell Davies. He has become a familiar and commanding presence on the operatic stage and has made something of a speciality of opera in concert. His burnished and flexible baritone is equally in demand for recitals and oratorio. He has sung concert repertoire with all the BBC orchestras, and many other ensembles including the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Russian National Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, and Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.
Opera rôles include many of the great Mozart baritone parts, Guglielmo in a production of Così fan tutte, the title-rôle in Don Giovanni and the Count in The Marriage of Figaro (all for Opera North), as well as Figaro in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. For Scottish Opera he has sung Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème and Lord Byron in the world première of Sally Beamish’s Monster. Other notable world premières include David Sawer’s From Morning to Midnight and Martin Butler’s A Better Place, both for English National Opera, his début with Netherlands Opera in Alexander Knaifel’s Alice in Wonderland and the world première of Michel van der Aa’s After Life (also Netherlands Opera.
Roderick Williams is also an accomplished recital artist, who can be heard at the Wigmore Hall, at many festivals, and on BBC Radio 3, where he has appeared on Iain Burnside’s Voices programme. Among his numerous recordings, most recent releases are a première recording of Vaughan Williams’s Willow Wood with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and further Naxos discs of English song with the pianist Iain Burnside.
