Willie Anthony Waters obit

The first African-American to lead a US opera company has died

 

He was not on the list.

Friends are reporting the death of Willie Anthony Waters, general and artistic director of Connecticut Opera (1999–2009) and music director of Florida Grand Opera (1986–1995). Willie was 74.

He was incapacitated by a stroke in 2019 and was further debilitated by Covid.

Among the companies he conducted were Opera Australia, Deutsche Oper Berlin, New York City Opera, Fort Worth and San Diego Opera. In 1995 he gave the South African premiere of Porgy and Bess in Cape Town.

Waters made his professional conducting debut in 1979, with the Utah Symphony.

He served as general and artistic director of the Connecticut Opera (1999–2009),was music director and principal conductor of the Florida Grand Opera (1986–1995), during those two tenures he conducted Salome, Manon Lescaut, Die Walküre, Macbeth, Aida, Of Mice and Men, Falstaff, Bianca e Falliero, Cristoforo Colombo, La Gioconda, Turandot, Tosca, Carmen, and Lucia di Lammermoor.[7] and was the opera conductor and artistic director at the Houston Ebony Opera Guild in 1995. He was also the music director of the San Antonio Festival from 1983 until 1985.

Waters was guest conductor at opera companies including the Australian Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, New York City Opera, Cape Town Opera, Fort Worth Opera, and San Diego Opera, also the Brucknerhaus Orchestra (Linz, Austria), Detroit Symphony, Essen Philharmonic (Germany), Florida Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Spoleto Festival, Southwest German Radio Orchestra, and Tallahassee Symphony. In 1995 he conducted the premiere of Porgy and Bess in Cape Town, South Africa.

In 2005, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford.

Waters was the musical director of the Martina Arroyo Foundation and the Prelude to Performance Summer Opera Training Institute.

He recorded for Philips the recital Ol' Man River conducting bass Simon Estes with the Munich Radio Orchestra and a recital with the mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett.

He conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in 2016 in a concert dedicated to Martin Luther King at the Severance Hall.

Waters suffered a stroke around 2019 that keeps him away from professional activity and was admitted for⟨⟩ COVID in 2020 in his hometown, where at the time of his death in 2026 he resided in a care center.