“You realise that support and guidance stands you in good stead and, in turn, the importance of giving from the goodness of your own heart, because someone believed in you.”
Heading to the University of Canterbury to study for a Commerce degree, Teddy discovered that he had to do extra music papers. “I was in the Youth Choir so I had to take singing lessons and managed to get into a course to get my lessons provided for me,” he says. “So, a whole lot of different choices that I made – with no end goal – ended up fashioning the career that eventually took me into doing music. You don’t necessarily know what you are going to do. Something changes your life’s direction. I had a couple of those moments.” While taking singing lessons, Teddy soon found himself being entered in competitions. “I started winning, and then I had to audition for a course at university and someone heard me, and I ended up at the New Zealand Summer School. It was like its own beast, which kept rolling and I just went with it. I had no fear at the time. I just stood up and sang and I loved doing it,” he says.
“I would jump on my bike at university and rush over to my singing teacher’s place in the middle of the day between lectures and do my lesson and race back. Her name was Mary Adams Taylor and her husband was my choirmaster at Medbury School. My music career was serendipitous but it was formed here at College.” In 1986, Teddy won the Sister Mary Leo Scholarship for New Zealand’s Most Promising Singer, while at university. In 1991, he won New Zealand’s Mobil Song Quest, helping to fund his studies at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. While he returned home and worked as an accountant, Teddy continued to sing in various productions. However, the Opera Australia offer in 1998 propelled the baritone into the international spotlight. “I got a phone call saying they needed a singer in Australia for a main role at the Opera House and would I audition. After a series of hiccups, I was on the plane to Sydney with three weeks to learn
the part. When I went there, it freed me up. I could be whoever I wanted to be. Rising to the challenge and proving yourself was liberating.” Over the past 26 years, he has won multiple awards and performed with leading opera companies around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Hamburg State Opera and the Bavarian State Opera in Germany, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Welsh National Opera, and the Scottish Opera. He has featured in seasons of Carmen , Don Giovanni , and Tosca , and appeared in South Pacific , The King and I , and
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