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The American tenor, Richard Taylor Bow, studied at the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, New York. He began his career as a Resident Artist with the Tri-Cities Opera in Binghamton, New York, and five years later in 1974 became the New York City Opera's youngest leading tenor with his much-acclaimed debut as Alfredo in La Traviata. In his five years there he sang more than a hundred performances of twenty leading roles ranging from the standard tenor fare (Pinkerton, Faust, Don Jose, Des Grieux) to the unusual (Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, Korngold's Die Tote Stadt), and after much success with the company, became the youngest singer ever to be honored with a new production, that of W.A. Mozart's Idomeneo, whose title-role he performed both at the NYCO and at the Kennedy Center's innaugural Mozart Festival with Elly Ameling.
In June 1976, Richard Taylor earned a permanent place in the operatic history books when he performed another title-role, that of Verdi's Stiffelio in the belated American Premiere of the work, given at the opera house of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. During the years 1974-1979, he appeared regularly as a guest artist with symphony orchestras and opera companies throughout the USA, with an impressive total of 35 leading tenor roles to his credit, ranging from the bel-canto (Norma and Lucia di Lammermoor to the French (Georges Bizet's Carmen, Manon, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Charles Gounod's Romèo et Juliet, C. Gounod's Faust and Le Cid, to the traditional (Rigoletto, La Bohème, Tosca) to the more dramatic fare (Un Ballo in Maschera, La Fanciulla del West, Il Trovatore and Der Fliegende Hollander.)
In 1979 Richard Taylor's career took one of show business' stranger turns when an extended summer vacation spent playing with a personal computer turned into a second international career. To his great surprise, the tenor-turned-hobbyist-computerist became a published author of commercial timesharing software, and six months later was approached with an offer that led him to found, and become president of an international retail computer corporation, necessitating his temporary retirement from the opera stages of the world.
But in 1990 the performer-at-heart took yet another turn of fate, and thanks to a last-minute cancellation and a case of being in the right place at the right time, was hired by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's newly appointed Music Director Daniel Barenboim to return to singing as the tenor soloist in four performances of Verdi's Requiem with the Münchner Philharmoniker in December of that year. Since his sudden return to opera, he appeared in concert with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in L.v. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and with the Orlando Opera as Hoffmann. On December 25, 1990, he made another last-minute debut, as Rodolfo in La Bohème with the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Richard Taylor began the 1991-1992 season as tenor soloist in the opening concerts of the Minnesota Orchestra's season conducted by Edo de Waart, (L.v. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9) and marked debuts in the UK with Opera North (Madama Butterfly) and a highly acclaimed last-minute substitution as Gustavus in Verdi's A Masked Ball with the English National Opera, reviewed by The Times of London as "an impressive American tenor.. his return is opera's gain."
Richard Taylor's recent performances include Les Contes d'Hoffmann (North Carolina), Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, L.v. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony, and performances of the Verdi Requiem with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led by Daniel Barenboim. His last public appearance was in a memorable G. Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in May 1995. He continued to sing throughout America and Europe, scoring notable successes, for a decade. |
