Pickersgill, William

Bass William (Bill) Pickersgill, a long-time tenured member of the Opera Chorus, has sung 30+ mainstage solo roles with the SF Opera including: an Assassin (Macbeth), The Official Registrar (Madama Butterfly), a Police Officer (Lulu), the First Fisherman (Peter Grimes), Keeper of the Madhouse (A Rakes Progress), 1st apparition (Macbeth), Arthur Jones (Billy Budd), Levis (Doktor Faust), and the Jailer (Tosca).

As a member of the Hagen Städtische Bühnen 1988-1990, he sang such roles as Ramfis (Aida), Daland (Flying Dutchman), Gremin (Eugene Onegin), Rocco (Fidelio), and Basilio (Il barbiere di Siviglia) as well as many other roles in operetta and musical theater. Locally, he has sung on the stages of West Bay Opera, Berkeley Opera, Oakland Opera, Island City Opera and Marin Opera. William has performed with The Bracebridge Dinner as “Nathaniel the Woodsman” at The Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park and been a member of that company for close to 30 years.

Bill can be heard on recordings including the Naxos recording of Die Ferne Klang, the SF Opera recordings of Harvey Milk and St. Francis of Assisi (amongst many others), film tracks recorded at Skywalker Ranch Studios (including an uncredited contribution to the T-rex roar for Ice Age -Dawn of the Dinosaurs) and most memorably on film as “the singing truck driver” in the Academy Award winning documentary In The Shadow Of The Stars.