WilliamThomas

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Bass
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Credit: JBR Studio @jbrstudio_ studiojbr.com
Credit: JBR Studio @jbrstudio_ studiojbr.com

Contact

Keiron Cooke

Keiron Cooke

Associate Director
Will Pate

Will Pate

Associate Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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About William

A graduate of the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and recipient of a number of major awards, British bass William Thomas is fast making a name for himself as one of today’s most promising young singers.

Highlights in his 2024/25 season include his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich as Colline La bohème, Sparafucile Rigoletto in a return to the English National Opera and his Carnegie Hall debut in Bach's Johannes-Passion with the Orchestra of St Luke's/Bernard Labadie.

Recent appearances have included roles for the Wiener Staatsoper; the Opéra national de Paris; La Scala, Milan; the Glyndebourne and Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festivals and, in concert, the Salzburg Festival with Camerata Salzburg/Manfred Honeck and the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra/Dinis Sousa, the BBC Proms with the Britten Sinfonia/David Bates, the Edinburgh Festival with The English Concert/John Butt and with the London Symphony Orchestra/François-Xavier Roth.

William is based in London

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Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

Follow William

Season Highlights

Oct 2024 - Nov 2024
English National Opera, London
VERDI - Rigoletto (Sparafucile)
Dec 2024 - Dec 2024
Quebec and Montreal
HANDEL - Messiah Bernard Labadie (conductor) Les Violons du Roy
Jan 2025 - Jan 2025
Symphony Hall, Xinghai Concert Hall
BEETHOVEN - Symphony No. 9 Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra/Huang Yi

Video

Audio

  • Mussorgsky: Song of the Flea
  • Poulenc: Mazurka

Photos

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News

Press

  • Verdi - Rigoletto

    English National Opera
    Nov 2024 - Nov 2024

    • They say the devil has the best tunes, and on this occasion he also had the best voice, as William Thomas delivered the finest singing of the evening as an inky-voiced Sparafucile – his low F as he slinks away into the darkness after his first encounter with Rigoletto deserving of the spontaneous applause. Not only was every word crisply enunciated, he used his cavernous bass voice to bring the character vividly to life.

    • …the most arresting singing comes from William Thomas

    • ...William Thomas’s spivvy assassin Sparafucile… supplies some of the best singing of the night.

    • William Thomas as Sparafucile makes the most of few lines, his rich, sepulchral bass vanishing into the darkness

    • William Thomas was a creepily impressive Sparafucile

    • The evening’s most vivid contribution came from bass William Thomas as the assassin Sparafucile. As well as sounding balefully imposing, the singer’s outstanding stagecraft allowed him to command the action even when only half-lit, inhabiting a forbidding stillness whence bled a barely-contained threat of violence

    • ...the secondary roles shone. And none more so than William Thomas’s hit-man Sparafucile: a classy killer down to the lowest depths of his brushed-velvet bass in the great exchange where Rigoletto perceives his kinship with the hired assassin (“I kill a man with laughter”).

    • Former ENO Harewood artist, British bass William Thomas as the black-hatted assassin Sparafucile combined vocal resonance and power with a youthful litheness that provided a welcome contrast to older ‘grim reaper’ iterations of the character. His easy corruptibility as a ‘man of honour’ was well combined with the more threatening aspects of the character

Discography