[Photo by Ellen Appel; Click to enlarge] Super sexy Daniel Okulitch is back and to our great delight, showing lots of skin. We're not sure yet if he's as stripped down as he was in The Fly, but he's in a much better opera this time, Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking." Of course, he may be in the buff again because the website has the following disclaimer: "Contains nudity and adult situations."
Dead Man Walking, which has become one of the most popular contemporary opera, is being performed by that haven of male pulchritude, the Ft. Worth Opera. Unfortunately, there are only two performances, May 2 and 10. For more information visit www.fwopera.org.
Okulitch joins a long list of barihunks who have sung the lead role of Joseph De Rocher, including John Packard, Mel Ulrich, Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Marcus DeLoach.
We were about to launch a "Sexiest Escamillo" competition when this photo arrived in the inbox. I'm not sure that there'd be much competition with the smoking hot Michael Todd Simpson in this still from Chicago Opera Theater's Tragedie de Carmen. He's pictured with the Carmen of Sandra Piques Eddy.
[Photo of Jerome Varnier by L'Oiseleur des Longchamps]
Here are three video clips of the sexy French barihunk Jérôme Varnier showing off his beautiful voice in a concert performance of Pelléas et Mélisande. Check out his previous post on this site: http://barihunks.blogspot.com/search?q=varnier
[Top Photo - Mariusz Kwiecien by Marty Sahl, next photo of Kwiecien in Seattle Opera's Marriage; Bottom - Jiroslaw Kitala as Aeneas]
We love Hot Poles at Barihunks and we're lucky to have two of them burning up the opera stages of the world. The bottom photo is Jiroslaw Kitala looking like he just left a toga party to perform in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Chorzów Culture Center.
Once again Seattle Opera has secured house favorite Mariusz Kwiecien to heat up their latest Mozart offering. The original Hot Pole will be singing Count Almaviva (alternating with fellow barihunk Johannes Mannov. BTW, Nicolas Cavallier is singing Figaro and I'd love feedback on whether he belongs on the site). One thing is certain, Kwiecien ALWAYS delivers a riveting performance and he remains one of the best singing actors on the stage today.
Seattle Opera remains one of the leading stages for Barihunks in America and they always put on a good show. Recently, emerging barihunk Thomas Forde was featured on this site in Seattle Opera's production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. If you haven't been, pay them a visit. You can learn more or just enjoy some great media at http://www.seattleopera.org. You can watch Kwiecien in action on the video posted above.
Hopefully, we'll see the other Hot Pole, Jiroslaw Kitala, on their stage in the near future. How about as Don Giovanni and Leporello?
Here is the latest video of the Über-Barihunk Randal Turner stripping in a performance of Roberto Hazon's "L'Amante Cubista" at the 2007 Accademia Opera Festival in Cagli. Although practically unknown today, Hazon was a classmate of Puccini and financially supported by Verdi. After graduation, he accepted a post as the conductor at the Sydney Philharmonic Society and became better known for his work with a baton.
His one-act opera "L'Amante Cubista" was usaully performed with another piece, often one of Puccini's. Today we will remember it as another opera that gave us a chance to see Randal Turner strut his hot stuff on the opera stage. For that, we are eternally grateful to the otherwise forgotten Hazon.
Here are some pictures sent to us by a reader of Markus Werba rehearsing Don Giovanni at Suntory Hall in Japan. He joins the abundance of barihunk Don's in the world today seducing unsuspecting sopranos. Amazingly, Werba has been singing this role since he was 21, when he performed it in his native Austria. Rumor has it that Werba is starting to retire some of his Mozart roles, most notably his charming Papageno.
[Top two photos of Abdrazakov from the Callao website; Ramey screencap from 1987 RAI broadcast]
The posting of Ildar Abdrazakov generated more mail than usual. It's becoming evident that many Barihunks readers like the big, beefy guys. Three readers chastised the site for never having posted Samuel Ramey, so here he is in two clips singing Attila in his prime. The second clip is the trailer for the current production in Peru with Abrazakov, but they use Ramey's 1991 performance from La Scala. Clearly, he deserved a place on this site.
Another reader directed us to the Peruvian website for the Festival Internacional De Opera Alejandro Granda del' Callao, which has some great stuff on it, including inteviews with Abdrazakov and other singers, video and lots of pictures. You can find it here: http://www.romanza.pe/.
Perhaps my favorite email was the one that read, "Ildar is super hot. More hunks, less twinks. Or rename your site baritwinks."
Mariusz Kwiecien just enjoyed another sensational success in the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni in his native Poland (bottom two photos). There is little doubt that he's probably become the leading Don in the world today and his performance of the role is always riveting. His next portrayal of the role will be at the Bavarian State Opera beginning on October 31st.
However, his other big Mozart role, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, dominates his schedule for the next year. He'll be performing the role next in Seattle, Madrid and then Chicago. You can buy tickets for Seattle here: http://www.seattleopera.org/tickets/production.aspx?productionID=63. His next barihunk role in the U.S. will be Escamillo at The Met, which opens on December 31, 2009.
I'm not sure how the Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov has eluded a place on Barihunks. However, the gorgeous photo of him from the new Metropolitan Opera brochure for the 2009-20 season is an attention grabber. He'll be singing the title role of Attila at The Met, a role he's singing right now at the Teatro Municipal del Callaoin in Lima, Peru.
Abrazakov was born in Ufa in 1976, where he studied at the Institute for Arts.
He attained notoriety with the release of Rossini's Mose et Faraon on DVD. With his hairy chest and oversized features, he will certainly make Attila a barihunk role. He already has Escamillo, Mephistopheles and Don Giovanni in his barihunk repertoire.
[From left to right: Mariusz Kwiecien, Polish baritone; Maija Kovalevska, Latvian soprano; Rolando Villazón, Mexican tenor; Nathan Gunn, American baritone; Danielle de Niese, Australian-born soprano; Erwin Schrott, Uruguayan bass; Anna Netrebko, Russian soprano. Photograph by Wayne Maser; styled by Sarajane Hoare - CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]
High C in High-Def
Meet seven international opera stars who are putting to rest the “fat lady sings” cliché, via live broadcasts to movie theaters.
by Damian Fowler, Vanity Fair, May 2009
Opera is ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille. Or, rather, Mr. Gelb, for Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb is responsible for bringing this high art to the silver screen. Since 2006, when the Met first broadcast live in high definition to selected movie theaters—now up to about 850 screens in 36 countries—audiences have been able to feel on intimate terms with world-class singers. “It’s like seeing somebody eye to eye,” says the Australian-born soprano Danielle de Niese, whose performance this past January in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice was beamed out to far-flung aficionados. Given the new craze, it’s a pleasure to have artists who are as easy on the eye as on the ear. A clear leader is Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, whose vocal and physical charms will be staged and screened in the Met’s new production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann in December, opposite Rolando Villazón, the dashing Mexican tenor. Offstage, her fiancé is the Uruguayan bass Erwin Schrott, who this winter was seducing audiences and maidens alike as Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Another leading man fond of the unbuttoned shirt is American baritone Nathan Gunn, who will be flexing his voice in the upcoming Met season as Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Joining him in the lower registers, Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien will portray the toreador Escamillo in the Met’s new production of Carmen, opening on New Year’s Eve. He’ll be teamed later with Maija Kovalevska, the Latvian soprano, whose high cheekbones and shimmering voice in the role of Micaëla will no doubt cause swooning in cineplexes around the world. Popcorn and Bizet? Why not?
I've been keeping an eye on Michael Nyby, hoping that he'll break out soon. He's currently performing in Donizetti's Elixir of Love with the Santa Fe Opera Spring Tour.
Here's a video of him singing "Deh, vieni alla finestra" from Mozart's Don Giovanni in Czechoslovakia. He also performs frequently with the Vancouver Opera and here is an interview with him from their blog (http://vancouveropera.blogspot.com/):
Guilty musical pleasure? I love singing Karaoke.
Where do you love to sing? I often sing when mountain biking or snowboarding.
What is your idea of earthly happiness? If only I knew.
To what faults do you feel most indulgent? I have a serious professional hockey addiction.
Who are your favourite heroes/heroines of fiction? Macbeth, Jean Valjean, Odysseus, and Batman
Who are your favourite characters in history? I'd have to go with Cleopatra - her life reads like an epic novel.
Who are your favourite heroes/heroines in real life? Leonard Warren, Barack Obama, and Wayne Gretzky
Who is your favourite author? I've gone through many, but I always seem to come back to Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins.
Your favourite musician? My wife.
Your favourite composer? That's a tie between Mozart, Verdi and Curtis Mayfield. Only a true genius could write Die Zauberflote, Otello, or the Soundrack to Superfly.
What quality do you most admire in a person? A sense of humour.
Your favourite virtue? The ability to accept and make light of one's faults.
Your favourite occupation? If I weren't an opera singer, I would wan to be Indiana Jones, so I suppose the anser is a totally-awesome-archaeologist-adverturer.
What did you want to be as a child? Indiana Jones. I still do!
Your most marked characteristic? It's hard for me to say, but my wife says the first thing she notices about me was my eyebrows. They're very pronounced.
What do you most value in your friends? Constancy. I have very few friends whom I can contact after years apart and it is like no time at all has passed.
For what would you like to be remembered? I'd be happy just being remembered.
What natural gift would you most like to possess? The Force.
What is your motto? "Come on, it'll be fun!" Which could also qualify for my famous last words.
The reputation of directors working in German opera companies is beyond mockery. Their obsession with sex, fetishism and leather, and their penchant for shock value is a running joke in opera circles. I'm beginning to wonder what type of psychological damage WW II created on the German psyche.
Spanish director Calixto Bieito has taken it to another level with his production of Gluck's "Armide" at the Komische Oper in Berlin. I'm not quite sure what to make of this production, which is usually about vengeance, magic, love, fulfillment and abandonment.
Bieito has made it about sex, obsession and more sex. One German paper called it porno-opera. I'm not certain who is in these pictures, but I think that the naked guy is tenor Peter Lodahl. I've got to believe that one of those bare butts or danglers is a baritone, so these photos have earned a spot on Barihunks.
[Top Photo - Christopher Maltman backstage; Bottom photo - Erwin Schrott and Kyle Ketelsen heating it up]
The New York Times ran a piece today about singers who sing both Don Giovanni and Leporello. It was nice to see barihunks Erwin Schrott, Paulo Szot and Ildebrando d'Arcangelo mentioned prominently. After all, this site couldn't exist without the all of the barihunks who were discovered either singing in Don Giovanni or performing a Benjamin Britten opera.
There were a few omissions in the article that seemed odd, like the brother team of Paul Armin Edelmann and Peter Edelmann, who just performed together at Opera Ireland to great acclaim (http://barihunks.blogspot.com/2009/02/barihunk-brothers-woo-girls.html). We may need to encourage the writer, Matthew Gurewitsch, to visit Barihunks, where he could learn of two of the hottest Don Giovanni/Leporello switcheroo performers in the world today, Kyle Ketelsen and Christopher Maltman. It doesn't get much hotter than those two.
I'm also hoping that our "Hottest Don Giovanni" winner, Randal Turner, lands a gig singing Leporello. I can't imagine many singers who I'd rather hear (or see) sing Leporello's "Catalog Aria."
Emerging barihunk David McFerrin is currently studying in Augsburg, Germany at the Hochscule für Musik. He recently was part of Caramoor’s pilot program for “vocal rising stars.” Caramoor partnered with Steven Blier's wonderful "Festival of Song" where he sang Russell Platt's sexually charged songs "Cuba" and "Bran." McFerrin had studied with Blier at Julliard and it was nice that Blier used McFerrin for this song series.
In 2008, Mr. McFerrin was awarded a Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation, given annually to promising young American opera singers. He has also been a regional finalist the past two years in the Metropolitan Opera National Council competition, recently placing 2nd in the New England Region. The Massachusetts native is a former member of the barihunk breeding ground known as the Santa Fe Apprentice Artist program.
West Coast fans of Steven Blier can catch him on Sunday, April 5 at San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El at 5:30 pm. He's bringing his NY Festival of Song to the Left Coast, performing Kurt Weill's Berlin. There are no barihunks scheduled, but a lovely hunkentenor named Andrew Bidlack. (Why are there no new posts on that site?).
Matthew Worth received a nice response from readers and lots of hits. Luckily, two readers sent me pictures of him showing a little skin. I have a feeling that you'll be seeing a lot more of this "worth-y" barihunk on this site.
Both of these shots are from a 2007 performance of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. The performance took place in Castleton, Virginia where Lorin Maazel created a residency program for young artists on his 550-acre farm.
