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Paul Whelan Bass-baritone
Paul Whelan, 1993 Lieder Prize in the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, pursues a busy concert and recital career. Highlights this year for the native New Zealander included Escamillo in Carmen at Welsh National Opera, Christus in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and London Bach choir, Judas in Elgar’s The Apostles at the Leeds Festival, Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast for Spanish television with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, and a series of concerts with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Forthcoming engagements include the Priest and the Angel of Agony in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in Berlin, Salisbury and New Zealand, a return to the London Bach choir for St Matthew Passion at the Festival hall and the world Premiere of Terra Incognita - a Symphonic cantata about Scott in the Antarctic for Bass soloist and Choir, written for Mr. Whelan by Gareth Farr and performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Next year he returns to English National Opera (ENO) to sing the roles of The Bonze in the Anthony Minghella production of Madam Butterfly, and Raimondo in a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor. He will also sing Duke Bluebeard in Bluebeard’s castle with NBR Opera New Zealand and Dvorak Requiem with the Gulbenkian orchestra in Lisbon conducted by Gennady Rozhdetsvensky.
During his decade-plus as baritone, Mr. Whelan found his voice maturing and settling, and therefore decided to concentrate on the bass-baritone and lyric bass repertoire. The numerous engagements reflecting this repertoire change have included Christus in a staged version of Bach’s St John Passion (directed by Deborah Warner) and Schaunard in a new production of Leoncavallo’s La bohème both at ENO, Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen with Welsh National Opera (WNO), and concert performances of Valens in Handel’s Theodora with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and in Winterthur. The past few years have also seen him adding repertoire such as the Four Villains in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann in Canterbury, New Zealand; Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder with the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Delius’s Sea Drift in Osaka, Argante in Handel’s Rinaldo in Munich, Apollon in Gluck’s Alceste at the Dresden Festival, the Nightwatchman in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger at the closing concert of the Edinburgh Festival, and Mussorgsky Songs and Dances of Death with the Ulster Orchestra, both recorded for BBC Radio 3. He was featured in the world premieres of The Assassin Tree by Stuart Mcrae in a joint production with the Royal Opera House and the Edinburgh Festival, and Bird of Night by Dominique Legendre, also for the Royal Opera House.
Paul Whelan studied as a baritone at the Wellington Conservatoire and the Royal Northern College of Music, where he won several prestigious prizes and scholarships. Early highlights included his debuts at Covent Garden, the Netherlands Opera and the Metropolitan Opera as Schaunard in Puccini’s La boheme, and as Marcello at the Munich State Opera. His Welsh National Opera debut was in the title role in The Doctor of Myddfai, a new commission by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (also recorded). He debuted at the ENO as Shaklovity in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina. He has sung Flint in Britten’s Billy Budd for the Geneva Opera and Paris Opera – Bastille; the Count in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro with the Teatro Municipal de Santiago di Chile; Figaro in a new production of Le nozze for Scottish Opera. With Australian Opera he has sung the title roles in Don Giovanni and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, as well as Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a production directed by Baz Luhrman. He has also sung Demetrius in Tourcoing, Montpellier, Nimes and at the Edinburgh Festival. He returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Ned Keene in Britten’s Peter Grimes; to Munich for Marcello; to the Bastille as Marcello in the Puccini Boheme, The Husband in Menotti’s Amélie va au Bal, and Gil in Le Secret de Suzanne; to The Royal Opera for performances of Tchaikovsky’s The Enchantress at the Royal Festival Hall, conducted by Valery Gergiev. He sang the title role of Handel’s Saul with the RIAS Berlin Chamber Choir; Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia in Nantes, Apollon at the Netherlands Opera, Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte for Dublin and New Israeli Opera, Olivier in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio in Sydney, and the Figaro Count with Scottish Opera,
Other engagements have included concerts under Sir Simon Rattle, Valery Gergiev, Kent Nagano, Richard Hickox, Yehudi Menuhin, Gary Bertini and Vassily Sinaisky. He has performed with many leading UK orchestras, as well as with the RIAS Berlin Chamber Choir and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. He has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall, The Purcell room, St David’s Hall in Cardiff, the Cheltenham Festival, for the BBC Pebble Mill, Perth Festival and at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris. Recordings include A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the LSO under Sir Colin Davis (Philips), Kurt Weill’s Silbersee under Markus Stenz (BMG) recordings with the BBC Philharmonic for Chandos and the BBC Scottish Symphony for Hyperion. He has also recorded for ABC Classics.
November 2007
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