Gerald Finley (Photo: Sim Canetty-Clarke)

'Singing frees my soul'

[Daily Telegraph, 4 June 05]

Before he jets off to take the lead in John Adams's new opera, Gerald Finley faces a challenge nearer home. He talks to Rupert Christiansen

This is quite a year for the marvellous baritone Gerald Finley. At 45, this former King's College Cambridge chorister is in his prime, singing with a maturity that is sweeping all before him.

In January he undertook his first major Verdi role, Germont in La traviata at Covent Garden — an experience he found both "thrilling and terrifying, though I'm still not sure if Verdi is a road I want to travel further". And later this summer he travels to San Francisco to sing the conscience-stricken nuclear scientist J Robert Oppenheimer in October's world première of John Adams's Doctor Atomic.

Click here for remainder of article.