Der Rosenkavalier

I had just won a competition.

I remember Covergarden, after Operalia asked me to do the Italian singer in Rosenkavalier, and I said, no, I'm not going to do it because it's to expose this role.

Yeah,

because at this moment, everything kind of accelerates for you.

Um, there's, there's these little nods that are, are obviously intentional.

And then of course the most famous, um, anecdote about there being some reference to Der Rosenkavalier that Kubrick made, that they, they knew it needed to go there somewhere.

They didn't know where it was supposed to go, so they put it in the scene where they're driving into Rouge City.

When I w- looked through the archives, I found, um, an early treatment by Aldiss using Der Rosenkavalier, um, for, for a, a scene where Monica and David are kind of dancing around together.

Um, and then Sara Maitland put it as kind of the, the, the button after the imprinting scene where Monica and David sort of bond, that they play Der Rosenkavalier.

And then it maybe comes back at the very end.

Kubrick thought maybe it should come back at the end when they reunite, um, which is interesting.

That was a nice learning in the context of wearing many hats.

Yeah, I got into acting when I was seven actually, and I was in an opera called Der Rosenkavalier at the ENO 'cause I was part of a children's choir, and we were... we came on in the background and sang, "Papa," multiple times, "Castigate our father." And I got the bug after that.

I think I came off my first night and my dad picked me up from the stage door and I was like, "I want to do this forever." And he was like, "Oh, dear God." [laughs] Quickly after, I went to a French primary school 'cause my mum's from Quebec, and we...

I grew up in London, but she wanted us to learn French.

And I got to do that on tour with Irish National Opera.

And then Octavian and Der Rosenkavalier by Rickard Strauss.

I did with Garsington this summer and also in Paris last summer.

And then Carmen, of course.

He was fascinated by, you know, characters like Salome, of course, who have, you know, very, very painful trajectories during the course of their operas.

Um, you know, you can e- very easily compare an opera like La rondine with Arabella as a thing that's about, engages with operetta, but also most obviously Der Rosenkavalier, which it's very, very similar to in all sorts of ways.

I think what captures Puccini's interest, I think it was in many ways an acoustic thing that I think he simply loved the sound of a soprano voice soaring over the orchestra.

He knew that it could achieve all of these effects with the orchestra that often male voices struggle with.

Standing at an imposing six foot ten inches, Potter is renowned across the opera industry for his true resonant basso profundo voice and massive physical presence on the stage.

His operatic career has featured major roles such as Baron Ochs in Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, Sarastro in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust.

He has performed with prominent regional and national opera companies, including Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Atlanta Opera, and has also covered roles on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera.

Recently, he was offered a main stage debut at the Met for the fall/winter of two thousand twenty-six, but he's unsure if he can pursue it.

Yeah, I don't know about this Mozart opera.

I think I'll just sing Octavian from Rosenkavalier right here.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah.