William Powers

Taught and mentored by George London and Norman Treigle, and sent to the director Frank Corsaro in New York for acting, William Powers made his New York City Opera debut in 1972 and has sung more than 130 roles since — a great many of them the rogues and villains that fall to the low male voice. Scarpia is the one he has named as the part he most enjoys, on the argument that the opera is really Scarpia's and that Puccini gave him a bass-baritone's range because a low voice commands authority. He created Meyer Wolfsheim in Harbison's The Great Gatsby at the Metropolitan Opera, and appeared in Penderecki's Paradise Lost for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Herrmann's Wuthering Heights in Portland and Stewart Copeland's Holy Blood and Crescent Moon in Cleveland. Two solo discs for Centaur include a programme of operatic arias with the Janáček Philharmonic under Dennis Burkh. A Chicagoan by origin, he sang in Wichita Grand Opera's Guillaume Tell in February 2014 and teaches in Barrington, Illinois.