Introducing Roberto Garcia Fernandez

Roberto Garcia Fernandez

Despite having featured barihunks from across the globe, we've had a dearth of singers from Cuba. We featured Homero Pérez Miranda back in 2009 and extensive coverage of the opera Before Night Falls based on the works of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. So when we learned about the amazing young bass-barihunk Roberto Garcia Fernandez, we were eager to feature him on the site.

Fernandez was born in Havana, Cuba on October 10, 1992 and studied at the Conservatory "Amadeo Roldan." He has performed Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute and the title role of Don Giovanni, Melisso from Handel's Alcina, Colline in Puccini's La boheme, the Priest in Puccini's Tosca, Malatesta from Donizetti's Don Pasquale and the priest from Vicente Lleo's La corte del Faraon.

Tenor Alfredo Kraus sings music from Maria La O:

He has also performed Jose Inocente from Maria La O by zarzuela composer Ernesto Lecuona, a fellow Cuban. Lecuona composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional quality. He was a prolific composer of songs and music for stage and film. His works consisted of zarzuela, Afro-Cuban and Cuban rhythms, suites and many songs that became Latin standards. They include Siboney, Malagueña and The Breeze And I (Andalucía). In 1942 his great hit Always in my heart (Siempre en mi Corazon) was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song; it lost out to White Christmas.

Fernandez has performed the baritone solo in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony three times, the first two directed by Guido Lopez Gavilan and the third one directed by Federico Cortese and the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra. In the United States he has sung at the 2014 Miami Piano Festival and in several concerts directed by Manny Perez.

He is currently a student of his fellow Cuban, Manny Perez, who has worked with Eglise Gutierrez, Elizabeth Caballero and Sidney Outlaw.