Cochran, William

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Cochran, William

Cochran, William, American tenor; b. Columbus, Ohio, June 23, 1943. He studied at Wesleyan Univ., with Singher at the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia, and with Melchior and Lehmann in Calif. In 1968 he sang Froh in Das Rheingold in San Francisco, and on Dec. 21 of that year he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y. as Vogelsang in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. After winning the Lauritz Melchior Heldentenor Foundation Award in 1969, he joined the Frankfurt am Main Opera in 1970. In 1974 he made his first appearance at London’s Covent Garden as Laca in Jenůfa. He returned to San Francisco in 1977 to sing Tichon in Kát’a Kabanová. In 1985 he was engaged as Bacchus at the Metropolitan Opera. After appearing as Otello with the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff in 1990, he sang Siegfried in Paris in 1991. He sang Aegisthus in Elektra at the London Promenade Concerts in 1993. In 1997 he returned to San Francisco to portray Herod in Salome.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire