Jeffrey Black made his operatic debut in 1984 as a principal artist of The Australian Opera. He made his UK debut in 1986 at the Glyndebourne Festival, and has since appeared internationally with many leading opera companies including The Metropolitan Opera New York, The Royal Opera Covent Garden, Los Angeles Opera, Netherlands Opera, the Opera Bastille Paris, Geneva Opera, San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, New Israeli Opera, Washington Opera, Vlaamse Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, at the Teatro Colon Buenos Aires as well as the festivals of Salzburg and Aix-en-Provence.
He is a noted interpreter of the great Mozart roles of Don Giovanni, the Count in Le nozze di Figaro and Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, his extensive repertoire includes Schaunard in La bohème, Papageno in The Magic Flute, Dr Falke in Die Fledermaus, Dandini in La cenerentola, Zurga in Les pecheurs de perles, the title role in Eugene Onegin, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Rodrigo in Don Carlos, the Count in Capriccio, Wolfram in Tannhauser, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ford in Falstaff and Balstrode in Peter Grimes.
On the concert platform Jeffrey Black has toured for the ABC and appeared in recital with Geoffrey Parsons, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta, Franz Welser Moest, Eka Pakka Saraste, Simone Young and in recital with Graham Johnson, Simone Young, Leslie Howard & Piers Lane.
His other concert engagements include performances
with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Die Fledermaus, Carmina
Burana (which was also recorded by EMI), as first Christus in Bach's St
Matthew Passion under Franz Welser-Möst, and arena concerts with Kiri
Te Kanawa in London, Stockholm, Sydney and Melbourne. His recording of
Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the Sydney Soloists for
ABC Classics was released in March 2003.
Recent performances
have included appearances with Opera Australia as Count in Le nozze di
Figaro, the title role in Don Giovanni, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor
and Danilo in a new production of The Merry Widow, Carmina Burana with
The Queensland Choir, Haydn's Creation and Messiah with Christchurch
City Choir and Escamillo in Carmen for Opera Queensland.
During the past two years Jeffrey has been studying and preparing the more dramatic Verdi/ Puccini repertoire, including role debuts as Rigoletto & Scarpia, He will be making his role debut as Boccanegra In Verdi’s original 1857 version at Queen Elizabeth Hall in a gala performance for the Chelsea Opera Group.
Reviews:
“Jeffrey Black, reaffirmed his stature as a force to be reckoned with on the world’s Operatic stages. His beautiful dark baritone restored the popular Abendstern to it’s innate nobility.” – The Bulletin, Tannhauser, Opera Australia, Sydney
