Operatic star not too hot to Handel

Teddy Tahu Rhodes

Teddy Tahu Rhodes is distracted in the lounge of his Christchurch hotel. He is between Messiahs - the one the night before with the Christchurch City Choir had gone well, he says, and there are two more coming up for Auckland Choral next Monday and Tuesday.

The baritone is about to catch up with his first singing teacher, Mary Adams Taylor, an inspirational force.

"She didn't mess with things and just guided, making sure that I avoided getting into trouble more than anything else. I was just 20 and singing music because I enjoyed it," he explains. "She tried to build on what I had naturally."

Shrewd tactics. In just seven years Rhodes has become hot property on the American operatic circuit, especially for roles in contemporary works like Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking and Andre Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire.

Dead Man Walking with the San Francisco Opera in 2000 made his name. Rhodes played the condemned murderer Joe de Rocher, a part he reprised in Adelaide last year.

"It was a life-changing opera for me," Rhodes admits, "and launched my career overseas."

Its success, he feels, is because of the relevance of the story about American anti-death-row campaigner Sister Helen Prejean. "Opera used to do that. It touched on issues that were relevant to the times and that is what this amazing piece of theatre does."

Rhodes has displayed some of the sexiest male images on the contemporary operatic stage in roles such as De Rocher, and Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar.

In July the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out how a prospectus for the 2007 Sydney production of Dead Man tried to lure would-be investors with an image of "New Zealand baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes sprawled on a flimsy hospital gurney, tanned, louche in perilously low-slung jeans, thumb tucked under the waistband, chest bare, looking coyly at the viewer under a banner headline, 'Your target audience has never seen anything like it'."

"It's very hard to comment on," is Rhodes' reaction to the market value of his chest. "Directors ask if you're prepared to do that sort of thing and I keep fit as a matter of course."

I mention a particularly gob-smacking image from the San Francisco production that must have boosted ticket sales amongst Castro St clientele. Rhodes laughs. "It does get harder as you get older. I can still do it but it takes a lot more effort."

Rhodes keeps his shirt on for Messiah next week. "I'm pleased to be coming back to my roots. It's something I never get sick of and I am thankful I have the chance to mix opera and oratorio together."

For the past seven years Rhodes has been busy on both sides of the Pacific, as well as at Covent Garden creating the role of the Pilot for Rachel Portman's The Little Prince.

After Messiah, it's back to Australia for recording sessions and then on to Houston for Puccini's Manon Lescaut, playing opposite Karita Mattila. Later in the year there is the German premiere of Hans Werner Henze's L'Upupa, which Rhodes admits is "fiendishly difficult stuff, although I have been lucky to do the modern stuff".

Just how does the man fill out his customs papers these days? "Sometimes I just put musician," Rhodes muses. "When I put opera singer, I can often sense that the officials don't believe me."


What: Auckland Choral - Messiah
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Monday and Tuesday 7:30pm