Roger Wilson — baritone, New Zealand
Roger Wilson enabled you to feel the anguish, the humility and love throughout the entire performance.
Wilson is an experienced opera singer and it showed. He timed his comic moments to perfection, sang with a sure sense of style and plenty of sly, tongue-in-cheek humour and was thoroughly at home on stage. Whenever he appeared the performance picked up momentum. Opera Opera
Singing both baritone and bass Roger is one of New Zealand's most experienced and versatile resident singers. He has a wide repetoire, has been engaged as a soloist by all New Zealand's major opera companies, orchestras and choirs and is also well known as a recitalist and broadcaster.
International New Zealand Artists represents Roger Wilson.
www.inza.co.nz/RW.html
email: jamie@inza.co.nz
Standout events
“My first Bach Cantata in Germany, my NZSO début, Delius' Sea Drift, countless recitals with Gillian Bibby or Terence Dennis, making my Antarctic CD, Mahler's 8th, Les noces, Peter Grimes, Boris Godunov. But for sheer excitement nothing surpasses Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1990, a watershed in NZ theatrical history.”
Reviews — Roger Wilson
Add to that soloists who were able to sing the taxing arias
with consummate artistry and feeling.
Don Evans Otago DailyTimes,
New Zealand
I enjoyed the soaring soprano of Pepe Becker, the resonance
and depth of bass Roger Wilson and his elegant style, the tonal quality of
Anne Lamont-Low and the sincerity and accuracy of Martin Hundelt's lightish
tenor.
Solo bass Roger Wilson has worked with Ars
Nova on many occasions and always seems to enjoy himself, this time
responding to the mammoth task of Elijah's role. He has commanding stature.
Tall, bearded, he looks the stern prophet, with voice and delivery every bit
as stern and commanding, especially in his vocal rantings with the choirs,
extolling them to ‘Call him louder! Louder!. He can't hear you.’
Harry Brown
His recitative style is well honed, diction, every inflection perfect, yet
producing an artistic cantabile in the tender moments of
Lord God of Abraham and later in the poignancy of It
Is Enough, Now Take Away My Life. Roger Wilson's interpretation of
Elijah was excellent, he enabled you to feel the anguish, the humility and
love throughout the entire performance.
CDs featuring Roger Wilson's work
The Songs of the Morning: A Musical Sketch
G.S. Doorly:
- Roger Wilson, baritone
- Gillian Bibby, piano
- Grant Tilly, narrator
- Peter Vere-Jones and Charles Wilson, recitants
- The Morning Glories, chorus
Recorded in Wellington, New Zealand, 2002
Listen to Southhward from track 3: 2:21 mp3 992kb or quicktime 824kb.
All proceeds of New Zealand sales go to the Antarctic Heritage Trust for the restoration of historic huts.
It is available at retailers throughout New Zealand or can be purchased direct from Roger Wilson (chords at paradise.net.nz)
Biography — Roger Wilson
Roger and xxx rehearsing for the Lord of the Rings
Roger Wilson is one of New Zealand's most experienced and versatile resident singers. Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, he studied and began his professional career in Switzerland and Germany in the 1970s.
Roger has a comprehensive concert repertoire and has been engaged many times as a soloist by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, orchestras and choirs nationwide. He is also an experienced recitalist, broadcaster and recording artist.
Roger has played both major and supporting roles all over New Zealand
Roger Wilson has played major roles all over over New Zealand, and also many supporting ones.
Baritone is Roger's strength, but his bass voice has "resonance and depth"
He is a baritone, but his range is an unusually wide one and he has, on occasion, been asked to take bass roles suited to his stature and character (e.g. Colline, Raimundo, Bartolo). However his strength is more in the top of his voice, and at his age (mid 50s), and vocally in his prime, he is increasingly playing older men in this vocal category.
Studied and performed in Switzerland and Germany; performed also in France
He studied at the University of Zürich, Switzerland 1970–72; the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie Detmold, Germany 1972–74; and the Staatliche Musikhochschule für Musik Rheinland, Cologne, Germany 1974–75. During this time he had concert engagements throughout Germany, as well as France and Switzerland.
Roger sings fluently in French, German, Italian and English.
As a consequence of his time and study in Europe, he speaks fluent German and sings it with particular ease, as well as French and Italian (and English!).
Seeking more opportunites to show his buffo flair
In recent times he has had less opportunity to show his buffo flair on stage except in Gianni Schicchi and smaller pieces like Chabrier's Une Éducation manqué… but he would like to remedy this!
Performs well with contemporary music
Roger is known to be trustworthy in demanding scores of newer music and has performed in the premières of several operas by New Zealand composers:
- Gillian Whitehead's Tristan and Iseult
- Dorothy Buchanan's The Woman at the Store
- Helen Fisher's Taku Wana
- the re-created Ribbands/Don musical — Marama.
Teacher, broadcaster and journalist
In addition to his career as an opera and concert singer, Roger keeps himself busy as a teacher, broadcaster and music journalist.
The Songs of the Morning: A Musical Sketch
The Songs of the Morning: A Musical Sketch,
is a recording of narrative, poems and music composed in the Antarctic by
his maternal grandfather, Lt.Gerald Doorly, on board the SY
Morning, the relief ship to Scott's Discovery
expedition in 1902.
Other members of the crew are:
- Gillian Bibby, token woman in a ‘Boys' Own’ venture
- Charles Wilson, Roger's son
- Grant Tilly
- Peter Vere-Jones
- Distinguished Volunteers make up the required ‘rollicking sailors' chorus’ including not only all Gerald Doorly's adult male descendants but also some well known New Zealand professional singers.
The recording was released simultaneously in the UK where the excellent illustrated booklet was compiled by Dr David Wilson, great-nephew of the legendary Dr. Edward Wilson.
All proceeds of New Zealand sales go to the Antarctic Heritage Trust for the restoration of historic huts.
The CD has been received with considerable excitement world-wide, not only by musicians but by historians and enthusiasts for the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, one point of particular interest being that one of the texts is written by Ernest Shackleton himself, the rest being by Chief Engineer J.D.Morrison.
Rod Biss, favourably reviewing The Songs of the Morning in the Sunday Star Times, New Zealand, concluded "It's worth listening to, preferably with a storm raging outside and a bottle of rum close by."
It is available at retailers throughout New Zealand or can be purchased direct from Roger Wilson (chords at paradise.net.nz)
For further information there is an article and interview on a BBC website.
