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Paul Whelan - Bass baritoneMr. Whelan joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera for the 2008-09 season. In addition, he performed Messiah with Omaha Symphony, Stanford’s Songs of Fleet with Ulster Orchestra, Mountararat in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe with San Francisco Symphony, and The Dream of Gerontius with Grant Park Music Festival. Upcoming engagements for the 2009-10 season include a return to the Metropolitan Opera, Valens in Handel’s Theodora with the Northern Sinfonia at Gateshead, and the bass soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass with Eugene Symphony Orchestra. Future engagements include Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Dallas Opera. In the 2007-08 season, Mr. Whelan returned to English National Opera to sing in the Anthony Minghella production of Madama Butterfly, and Raimondo in a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Of this performance, George Hall of The Stage wrote, “Paul Whelan sang the role magnificently.” He also sang Duke Bluebeard in Bluebeard’s castle with NBR Opera New Zealand and Dvorak Requiem with the Gulbenkian orchestra in Lisbon conducted by Gennady Rozhdetsvensky. Additional recent 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 for bass soloist and choir, written for Mr. Whelan by Gareth Farr and performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra In the 2006-07 season, Mr. Whelan sang Escamillo in Carmen at Welsh National Opera, Christus in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra 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. Recent notable engagements for Mr. Whelan include performances at Welsh National Opera, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, 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. Mr. Whelan began his career as a baritone and performed with many major companies including Covent Garden, the Netherlands Opera the Metropolitan Opera, the Munich State Opera, Geneva Opera, Paris Opera/Bastille, Teatro Municipal de Santiago di Chile, Scottish Opera, Australian Opera, Montpellier, and Nimes. In concert he has performed under Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Richard Hickox, Yehudi Menuhin, Valery Gergiev, Gary Bertini, and Vassily Sinaisky with many leading UK orchestras, as well as with the RIAS Berlin Chamber Choir and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, among others. 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. Top Of Page |
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