Georgian bass Goderdzi Janelidze is the winner of the First Prize at the 2017 Elena Obraztsova International Competition, the Main Prize and Audience Prize at the 2018 International Fyodor Chalyapin competition and the First Prize and Audience Prize at the 2018 International Rimsky-Korsakov Competition. He was previously a member of the ensemble at the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow, where his roles included The Monk Don Carlo, Colline La bohème and Brander La damnation de Faust.
In the 2019-20 season he makes his house debuts at the Wexford Festival Opera (title role Don Quichotte) and Vlaanderen Opera (Vodnik Rusalka). He also returns to the Canadian Opera Company (Ramfis Aida).
Engagements in the 2018-19 season included his house debut at the Bregenzer Festspiele (Sparafucile Rigoletto) and his return to the Teatro Colòn (Sparafucile Rigoletto) as well as a performance of Verdi’s Requiem at Berlin Cathedral.
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Title role, Don Quichotte
Wexford Festival Opera, October 2018
The very young Goderdzi Janelidze is successful in the title role and convincingly portrays the old, somewhat frail, man. Janelidze's bass has a striking low register that soars easily up to baritonal heights. He succeeds in not holding the character up to ridicule, even though he attracts the mockery of others.
Thomas Molke, Online Musik Magazin, 23 October 2019 (translated)
The Georgian bass Goderdzi Janelidze fills the boots of the stiff-limbed Quichotte with moving, grave tenacity...
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, 23 October 2019
Goderdzi Janelidze made a fine impression in the title role. The Georgian has a silky bass, weaving long legato lines around Don Quichotte’s serenade, a sighing melody which recurs in the entr’acte after the tilting at windmills episode… he’s a young artist, learning his craft, and shows great promise.
Mark Pullinger, Backtrack, 23 October 2019
Janelidze’s performance as Don Quichotte was revealed as a dramatic and expressive tour de force, a remarkable embodiment of nostalgia, nobility and gentility communicated physically and vocally. The ravages of time made their presence felt in Janelidze’s physical frailty: the limbs that needed a gentle nudge to bend or straighten; the slow steps and graceful prod that propelled the gallant knight’s bicycle onwards. Somehow Janelidze had the discipline to restrain his vocal weight - though his projection is so strong that even a whispered phrase made its mark - for the dramatic highpoints which impress upon us the knight’s honour: the riposte to the bandits who attach and abuse him in Act 3, ‘Je suis le chevalier errant’, or his death-bed promise to the loyal Sancho, ‘Prends cette île’. These sudden moments of enrichening and colour were so much more telling for the grave and tender fragility within which they were framed. I was deeply moved, almost to tears, by Janelidze’s courage and conviction.
Claire Seymour, Opera Today, 28 October 2019
Verdi's Requiem, Teatro Colòn
Teatro Colòn, Buenos Aires, July 2018
New to the local stage was the young Georgian bass Goderdzi Janelidze, who impressed with his vocal scope and power, haunting in the ‘Mors stupebit’ to dramatic in the ‘Confutatis’.
Jonathan Spencer Jones, Seen and Heard International, July 2018
Eugene Onegin (Prince Gremin), Vancouver Opera
Vancouver Opera, May 2018
in the short time he was onstage, Georgian bass Goderdzi Janelidze commanded the stage while establishing the essential nobility of his character in some of the most gorgeous and most ‘echt-Russian’ music ever written for the bass voice. Janelidze had a resonance in his low range that many a bass could only dream of.
OperaCanada.ca
Georgian bass Goderdzi Janelidze has an enormous voice and low notes that can purr or throb with raw intensity as required. He gets only what amounts to an extended third-act cameo, but it’s one of the glories of the production.
David Gordon Duke, Vancouver Sun
Rigoletto (Sparafucile), Canadian Opera Company
21 January 2018
Goderdzi Janelidze also impressed as Sparafucile; singing with solidity and power while exuding a quiet menace.
John Gilks, Bachtrack
