He has performed at opera houses in New Zealand, Australia, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington, New York City and throughout Europe.
[5] In his final year of secondary school, Christ's College, Christchurch, Rhodes was selected for the New Zealand Youth Choir, where his musical potential was first identified.
In 1991 Rhodes won the Mobil Song Quest, the major competition of its type in New Zealand, securing funding to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
[8] He has sung in several world and Australian premiere performances such as The End of the Affair (Bendrix) and Dead Man Walking (Joe) by Jake Heggie, The Little Prince by Rachel Portman (The Pilot) as well as in Nigel Butterley's Spell of Creation and Barry Conyngham's Fix.
His wide variety of other opera roles have included Mozart's Count Almaviva, Guglielmo, Papageno and Don Giovanni; Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream; Belcore in L'elisir d'amore; Billy in Billy Budd; Lescaut in Manon Lescaut; Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire; Escamillo in Carmen; Al Kasim in Hans Werner Henze's L'upupa; Silvio in Pagliacci, Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos, Leandro in The Love for Three Oranges and Antony in Barber's Antony and Cleopatra.
[11] In oratorio and choral works, he has appeared as the baritone soloist in performances of Handel's Messiah with the Melbourne Symphony and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, and in Fauré's Requiem with the London Philharmonic.
The inaugural Australian cruise of the performing arts on the MS Radiance of the Seas in November 2014 included Rhodes as well as, among others, Cheryl Barker, David Hobson, Simon Tedeschi, Elaine Paige, and Marina Prior.