An Opera Australia publicist said Teddy Tahu Rhodes brought tears to her eyes during a Billy Budd dress rehearsal. Photo / Branco Gaica

An Opera Australia publicist said Teddy Tahu Rhodes brought tears to her eyes during a Billy Budd dress rehearsal. Photo / Branco Gaica

Opera pin-up boy Teddy Tahu Rhodes seems genuinely impressed by his latest conquest. Opera Australia publicist Emma Williams has admitted to him that towards the end of the final dress rehearsal of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd in Sydney this week, she had tears in her eyes.

For the Christchurch-born baritone, playing the lead role as the doomed sailor Budd, it's a pleasant reminder of the power of opera done well to draw people into the drama.

He admits afterwards that at the spot in the opera which usually triggers the tears, the build-up to Budd's hanging, his mind that night was on other things. He was worrying whether he was in the right position on stage. Regardless, the music and drama was doing its work. "You are not always aware of the profound affect it can have on people."

There'll possibly also be a tear or two shed by some of his fans over his plan to marry up-and-coming New York mezzosoprano Isabel Leonard, 26, in December and set up home in New York.

Rhodes, 42, who has lived out of a suitcase for the past 10 years, says the idea of a permanent home is exciting. If he hasn't had time to build a house in the decade since he escaped Christchurch and a seven-year previous-life as an accountant, it is because he's been concentrating on building an impressive international career _ one built not just on a great voice, but also on his facility with modern works and his "look".

In Melbourne he was plastered topless over the side of city buses to promote his leading role in Andre Previn's operatic version of A Streetcar Named Desire. On YouTube, he is shirtless, in clips from his San Francisco debut as condemned prisoner in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking.

But as the reviews from his New York Metropolitan Opera debut this year emphasise, he also has a great voice. "I was covered from head to toe," he laughs. "At the Met the only thing you saw of me was my little face. It's nice to be recognised in that way."

He was playing Ned Keene in Britten's Peter Grimes, a performance broadcast worldwide in Metropolitan Opera simulcasts. Rhodes' growing reputation as an interpreter of modern works "just happened".

"I did one, Dead Man Walking, it was a success, and from that everyone thought I could do modern music.

"It's not just opera, I have done premieres of concert works of a lot of stuff first time out. I love doing it."

He says it's hard work and you can't take "the cheat's way" and listen to a recording to help learn it. "Then again, you get to work with the composer and get the real insight."