We post a lot about Seagle Music Colony and love our annual feature of the low voice men sporting their barihunk tee shirts, which you can see HERE and HERE. Somehow we missed Garrison Carpenter, who dubs himself a bari-tenor, so that makes him a bari-hunkentenor.
At Seagle he's performed in both West Side Story and Side by Side by Sondheim. His performances prompted Mark Frost of the Glens Falls Chronicle to write, "You never know when somebody you see at Seagle might hit the big time. It seems to me Garrison might.”
Carpenter is an Actor Equity member, who recently earned his master’s degree in vocal performance from Florida State University. He lives in Philadelphia and has worked at many theaters in the northeast. His recent roles include Billy in Anything Goes at the Broadway Theater of Pitman and the title role in The Who’s Tommy at the Media Theater in Pennsylvania.
From November 18-January 3, he'll be appearing as Tony in Elton John's Billy Elliot at The Media Theater. Tickets are available online.
Other roles include Hosie in Carlisle Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree, Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosí fan tutte,
featured soloist in Bach’s Weihnachts-Oratorium with the
Florida State University Chamber Choir. Dickon in The Secret Garden, Radames in Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida, Jamie in The Last Five Years and Bill Calhoun in Kiss me Kate.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGERS FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
Romain Dayez, Jason Duika, Marco Vassalli and Malte Roesner (L-R)
Jake Alan Nelson and Brutus(Photo on left: Jiyang Chen)
We first posted about barihunk Jake Alan Nelson when we mentioned him in a piece about a trio of barihunks in The Marriage of Figaro at Juilliard. The cast included Szymek Komasa and Theo Hoffman, but we never really properly introduced the Dallas, Texas native to readers.
Jake is currently a fourth-year undergraduate studying with the great baritone and coach Sanford Sylvan. He transferred to The Juilliard School from Collin College, and he has experience in several areas of the theatre. While performing various theatre and musical theatre roles, he also worked as a scenic carpenter and sound technician in the North Dallas area for eight years.
Next month, Jake will be performing in the undergraduate opera program of Ives and Britten songs paired with Ravel's one-act opera L'enfant et les sortilèges. Jorge Parodi will conduct the singers and members of the Juilliard Orchestra, but the performance is by invitation only.
This past summer he was involved with the Arts Fusion Initiative. Their project, Into the Sun, combined multiple art forms with the text of ATrue Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island by American poet, Frank O'Hara.
This year, he has been awarded the Dr. Gary Portadin Scholarship and the Philippa Leeds Scholarship.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGERS FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
John Paul Huckle: Mr. May 2015 in our Barihunks Charity Calendar (with Cyril Rovery & Jason Duika)
A welcome new addition to our Barihunks Charity Calendar this year is the American bass John Paul Huckle, hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is featured in the month of May with fellow barihunks Cyril Rovery and Jason Duika as guys who all have great chest voices (ok, great chests).
''I believe the Barihunks association to be a great tool for branching
out and putting the lower voice first. So often it's all about the
soprano or tenor. Barihunks puts us baritones and basses in the
limelight for a change," said John Paul Huckle. "I am pleased to have taken part of the
''Barihunks'' calendar as it is something that will eventually fund a
competition for the baritone and bass voices and fund other projects as
well featuring low males voices.''
Huckle has become a regular at the Teatro Carlo Felice where this season he has performed Cesare Angelotti in Tosca, Dansker in Billy Budd, Zuniga in Carmen and the Marchese d'Obigny in La traviata. He's currently singing Pietro in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra in a cast that includes fellow barihunk Ricardo Crampton. In May, he'll sing Cirillo in Giordano's Fedora.
John Paul Huckle sings Some Enchanted Evening:
The October 31st performance of Simon Boccanegra will be live-streamed from the Teatro Carlo Felice and available for viewing online at 3:10 PM . The opera will be conducted by Stefano Ranzani and feature Naoyuki Okada as Gabriele Adorno, Benedetta Torre as Amelia and Mansoo Kim in the title role.
Huckle studied at Boston University Opera before
completing his Master of Music at the Indiana Univerisity where he
studied with the
legendary bass Giorgio Tozzi. At Indiana University he performed the
Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Pistola in Falstaff,
Friar Laurence in Roméo et Juliette, Hobson in Peter Grimes, Sarastro
in The Magic Flute, Antonio in Le nozze di Figaro and the
Count Des Grieux in Manon.
He went on to hone his skills at young artist programs at the Central
City Opera, Tulsa Opera, Utah Festival Opera, Opera North,
Brevard Music Center, and the Sarasota Opera. While at Sarasota Opera,
he received the distinguished Leo Rogers Outstanding Apprentice award.
In 2007, he made his professional debut as Sparafucile in Verdi's Rigoletto with the Cleveland Opera. Since the 2010-2011 season, he has been singing in major European houses including the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Teatro Regio di Torino, Teatro Verdi in Pisa and the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGER FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
On November 6th the Brooklyn Art Song Society will present Britannica: In Memoriam: Songs of the Great War at The Old Stone House. Barihunks John Moore and Jarrett Ott will join tenor Dominic Armstrong and pianists Michael Brofman and Miori Sugiya. Tickets are available online.
The concert focuses on works by British composers whose lives were impacted by World War I. W. Dennis Browne and George Butterworth were killed in action, and their respective pieces represent the tragic loss of genius before their time. Ivor Gurney wrote his powerful songs in a sanitarium receiving treatment for psychological trauma from his war experience.. Though Gerald Finzi was from the next generation, he set Thomas Hardy's Channel Firing, a famous meditation on the madness of war.
Upcoming performances for Ott include the Opera Philadelphia Emerging Artist series on November 8th with fellow barihunk Andrew Bogard and hunkentenor Roy Hage. You can listen to Jarrett Ott sing Pierrot's Tanzlied HERE.
Upcoming performances for Moore include Count Almavivia in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro with the Seattle Opera opening in January 2016, Tadeusz in Weinberg's The Passenger with Florida Grand Opera and Adario in Rameau's Les Indes galantes at the Munich Opera Festival with fellow barihunk Tareq Nami.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGER FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
No sooner did our post go up about the barihunk duo in Sarasota Opera's La bohème when we received a message about Hans Tashjian, a bass in their young artist program. He'll be part of the program for both the fall and winter and will be perform with the chorus for Verdi's Aida, Beethoven's Fidelio, and Verdi's La Battaglia di Legnano.
I'm currently in Sarasota for the fall season with Sarasota Opera. I'll be returning as a young artist again this upcoming winter season. I'll also be the bass soloist in the Bach Magnificat at The Cathedral of St John the Divine's Christmas Concert in NYC
Hans Tashjian
Hans Tashjian graduated with a Bachelors
of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon
University and a Masters from the Manhattan School of Music.While in school, he performed Baron Ochs
in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, Plagio in the American premiere of I
Due Figaro, Sarastro in Mozart's Die
Zauberflöte, Truffaldin in Richard Strauss' Ariadne
auf Naxos, and Pooh-Bah in Gilbert & Sullivan's The
Mikado. He has also appeared as Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust with the New York Lyric Opera Theatre, Seneca in Monteverdi's L’Incoronazione di Poppea with dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, a
soloist with the Bach Choir of
Pittsburgh and performed with the Bach Music
Festival of Canada.
On December 12th, he'll appear as the bass soloist with the Cathedral Church of Saint John Devine for their Cathedral Christmas Concert. The concert will include Johann Sebastian Bach's Magnificat and carols by Benjamin Britten, John Rutter and Gregg Smith.
More information about the Sarasota Opera season is available online.
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Two barihunks are featured in the Edmonton Opera's English language production of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. The operetta opened last night and will be performed again on Tuesday, October 27 and Thursday, October 29.
Michael Nyby sings Danilo Danilowitsch, Hanna Glawari's ex-lover who is less excited about being her lover and sharing in her recently inherited wealth, than most men. Aaron Durand, who appeared with the company in their Barber of Seville last year, takes on Vicomte Cascada.
Preview of The Merry Widow at Edmonton Opera:
Nyby and lead soprano Sally Dibblee have been tasked with dancing duties as well as singing, as director Brent Krysa and choreographer Dave Ganert have found inspiration in Hollywood dance musicals. Dibblee even took ballroom dancing lessons for the part.
Nyby is a native of Hamilton, Ontario who created the roles of William Dale in Kevin Puts' Silent Night, Brent Colgate in Gregory Vajda's Georgia Bottoms and Demetrio in the US premiere of Kristin Hevner Wyatt's Il Sogno. This season he'll be creating the role of Seth in the Canadian opera Peter-Anthony Togni'sIsis and Osiris with Opera in Concert. He'll be joining hunkentenor Karim Sulayman for Händel's Messiah with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in Ontario on December 7 and 8.
Aaron Durand talks about being an opera singer:
Durand hails from 100 Mile House, British Columbia After graduating from the University of British Columbia in 2012, he joined the Vancouver Opera's Yulanda M. Faris young artist program, performing roles in several mainstage productions including La bohème, The Pirates of Penzance, Albert Herring and Don Giovanni. He was Masetto in the innovative production of #UncleJohn with the Against the Grain Theatre.
You can follow Aaron Durand on Twitter @Gingervanni.
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Ipca Ramanovic in Cosi fan tutte(left - photo by Florian Merdes)
Our recent post about two sexy productions of Mozart's Così fan tutte in Florence and Weisbaden prompted a reader to point out that Ipca Ramanovic is performing Guglielmo in Heidelberg. The cast also included James Homann as Figaro, Wilfried Staber as Dr Bartolo, Irina Simmes as Countess Almaviva, Rinnat Moriah as Susannah and Carolyn Frank as Marcellina. Performances run from November 6th through May 16th.
The 32-year-old Serbian studied at the Music
Academy in Belgrade and Novi Sad, where he was also a member of the
Opera Studio.
At the Opera School he performedin Carmen, John Cage's Europeras, Leporello in Don Giovanni, the Father in Hänsel und Gretel, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, and Sharpless in Madama Butterfly. In 2007, he made his debut in Bielefeld in Carl Millöcker’s Gasparone. He joined the Opera Studio at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2010, where he sung Masetto in Don Giovanni, Farfarello in The Love for Three Oranges, Djuro in Die rote Zora, and Schaunard in La bohème. He joined the ensemble of Theater Heidelberg in 2013.
Upcoming performances in Heidelberg include a concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra that includes Brahms' Four Serious Songs, Opus 121 and Marcello in La bohème next summer.
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We haven't posted about bass-barihunk Anatoli Sivko since the BARITONE BLACKOUT at the OPERALIA competition in Los Angeles in 2014.For those of you who have forgotten, that's when 11 of the 40 competitors at OPERALIA were some of the best low voices on the opera scene, but not a single one made it to the final round.
Sivko not only made it to the final round with two other baritones, but took the top men's prize at the Neue Stimmen competition today. Elsa Dreisig took the top prize for women, as well as the audience prize. Tenors Pene Pati and Lukhanyo Moyake took second and third prize respectively. Miriam Albano and Bongiwe Nakani were the other winners among the women.
Anatoli Sivko sings Verdi's "O tu, Palermo"from I vespri siciliani:
Anatoli Sivko graduated from the Molodechno Music College and the Belarusian State Academy of Music. Since graduating, he
has been a soloist of Bolshoi Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Minsk. He's performed in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Verdi’s Attila, Monteverdi’s Orpheus, and
Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.
During the 2015-2016 season he makes his house debuts in Un ballo
in Maschera at theBayerische Staatsoper, Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame at Netherlands
Opera and Leporello in Don Giovanni in Barcelona.
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Matthew Worth will take on David T. Little's Soldier Songs in a new production at the Atlanta Opera, which has previously been performed by fellow barihunks David
Adam Moore in New York and Christopher Burchett in Fargo. The production is part of the new Atlanta Opera Discoveries series and will be Southeast premiere of the work. The performances will run from November 11-15 and tickets are available online.
The production is being done by the art/media collective,GLMMR, with sets, costumes, video by David Adam Moore's partner Vita Tzykun and lighting by Max Bowman. The director will be Tomer Zvulun who is the first veteran to be creatively involved with the show. He was a combat medic in the Israel Defense Forces.
Soldier Songs is an evening-length multimedia event that combines
elements of theater, opera, rock-infused-concert music, and animation to
explore the perceptions versus the realities of the Soldier, the
exploration of loss and exploitation of innocence, and the difficulty of
expressing the truth of war. The libretto was adapted from recorded
interviews with veterans of five wars.
In December, Worth will return to his native New England to perform Joyful Voices with the Hartford Symphony and Chorale. The performance includes music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon, excerpts from Handel's Messiah and Fauré's Requiem in D minor, Op. 48. He'll be joined by soprano Melody Moore.
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Omar Montanari, Juan Francisco Gatell and Simone Alberghini
Così fan tutte at Opera di Firenze
We introduced Italian barihunk Omar Montanari back in 2011. He specializes in comic roles, such as Dandini and Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore, and is currently singing Don Alfonso in Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Opera di Firenze through October 27. The popular new production directed by Lorenzo Mariani was sold out on opening night. It updates the action and features lots of shirtless men, as you can see from the pictures above.
The cast also includes Anna Goryachova as Dorabella, Juan Francisco Gatell as Ferrando, barihunk Simone Alberghini as Guglielmo and Giulia Semenzato as Depsina.
Omar Montanari sings Strangers in the Night in Italian (Solo piu' che mai):
Upcoming peformances for Montanari include Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia in Rome and Venice, Taddeo in Rossini's L'italiana in Algieri and Dulcamara in Venice.
Another new production, directed by Uwe Eric Laufenberg, will open in Wiesbaden on November 1st and feature American barihunk Christopher Bolduc as Guglielmo. The production is offering limited seating on a special rostrum at the back area of the stage, allowing audiences to get close to the action with the beautiful theater as the backdrop.
Christopher Bolduc and Silvia Hauer (Dorabella) in Wiesbaden
The cast includes Heather Engebretson as Fiodiligi, Silvia Hauer as Dorabella, Ioan Hotea as Ferrando, Gloria Rehm as Despina and Wolf Matthias Friedrich as Don Alfonso.
This season in Wiesbaden, Bolduc can also be seen as Belcore in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Sharpless in Puccini's Madama Butterfly.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGER FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
Craig Irvin and Colin Ramsey will portray Marcello and Colline respectively in Sarasota Opera's upcoming run of Puccini's La bohème. The production will run from October 30 to November 17 and includes Jessica Rose Cambio as Mimì, Angela Mortellaro as Musetta, Martín Nusspaumer as Rodolfo and Gideon Dabi as Schaunard.
Craig Irvin sings If I Loved You from Carousel:
Craig Irvin, who just finished a successful run as the Pirate King in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, will next take on the Count in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro with Utah Opera.
Colin Ramsey will sing Christus in Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Gulfshore Opera in March 2016 in Punta Gorda, Fort Myers and Naples, Florida.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGER FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
Jim Wright with Dmitri Hvorostovsky (left); in rehearsal for Alice Ryley(right)
Sherrill Milnes' VOICE Programs is presenting the one-act opera Alice Ryley based on the famous Savannah, Georgia ghost of Wright Square. The opera was written by composer Michael Ching and will be performed in English on October 30th at 4 PM. It will feature barihunk Jim Wright in the role of Richard White. 80-year-old legend Sherrill Milnes will play the role of the tour guide.
Legend has it that Alice and her purported lover, Richard White, worked as indentured servants assigned to William Wise—a crotchety disgraced aristocrat who had manipulated his passage to the New World, where he homesteaded a cattle farm on Hutchinson Island. Among the servants’ many duties was bathing the sickly Wise and washing his long, greasy hair. Fed up with their demeaning tasks, Alice and Richard strangled Wise with his own lackluster locks before drowning him. They were captured before they could escape through the marsh. The two were jailed and later hanged at the gallows in Wright Square—but not before Alice gave birth to a baby boy.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has bestowed the Order of Alexander Nevsky on über-barihunk Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The award is given for exceptional artistry over a period of 20 years or more.
Hvorostovsky has received an outpouring of worldwide love since he revealed earlier this year that he was receiving treatment in London for a brain tumor.
He will next appear on Ocotber 29th with mezzo Elīna Garanča in a concert at the Kremlin Palace, which will be repeated on November 2. On November 18th, he joins fellow barihunk Ildar Abdrazakov at the Bashkir Opera. He returns to the stage on December 19, when he appears in the title role of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House in London.
He returns to the US stage on February 3rd as Count di Luna in Verdi's Il trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera. This is a reprise of the role he first performed after cancer treatment at The Met on September 25, 29 and October 3 of this year.
DISCLOSURE: Barihunks deliberately stays out of political issues.
We are well aware of the fact the Vladimir Putin and Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad are meeting today. This post is solely intended to honor
Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGER FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
Italian barihunk Mirco Palazzi is reprising the role of Assur in Rossini's Semiramide with Opéra de Marseille through October 27th with Jessica Pratt in the title role. He'll take up the role again in March 2016 with the thrilling soprano Leah Crocetto in the title role.
Semiramide was Rossini's final Italian opera before moving to Paris, where he went on to write Il viaggio a Reims, Le siège de Corinthe, Moïse et Pharaon, Le comte Ory and Guillaume Tell.
By the late 1800s, Semiramide had virtually disappeared from the repertoire. However, it was chosen in 1880 to inaugurate the Teatro Costanzi, new venue of the Rome Opera House, and appeared as part of the Cincinnati Opera Festival in 1882, which was attended by Oscar Wilde. The opera virtually disappeared after 1895, until a German language revival in Rostock in 1932 and a performance under the baton of Tullio Serafin at the Maggio Musicale in 1940.
Perhaps the most famous exponent of Assur in the last half century has been Samuel Ramey.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGER FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
Barihunk Keith Phares is alternating the role of Zurga with Brett Polegato in the Seattle Opera's current production of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers. Phares, who turns 41 on October 26, appears to be in the best shape of his career, as witnessed in these photos from the opera. Phares has one performance left on October 30, which is opposite the stunning Léïla of Elizabeth Zharoff and the Nadir of Anthony Kalil, who joins him in the famous duet "Au fond du temple saint.”
There are additional performance with Polegato, Maureen McKay and John Tessieron October 21, 24, 28 and 31. Tickets and additional production information is available online.
Upcoming performances for Phares include the Alzheimer's Stories with the Montclair State University Chorale on December 6th and a return to his acclaimed performance of Charlie in Jake Heggie's Three Decembers with the Florentine Opera from March 11-20.
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Two of the most acclaimed barihunks in opera will be headlining a benefit concert for Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS on Saturday, February 27, 2016 in New York City. They will be joined by soprano Amanda Majeski and tenor Matthew Polenzani as part of the Michael Palm Series.
The series, which is in its twelfth season, features intimate house concerts starring the biggest names in opera, classical music and jazz, all of whom generously agree to donate their time and talent in support of Classical Action.
Michael Palm, who died in 1998, was an originator of these private benefit house concerts, hosting several of them himself at his penthouse apartment 37 floors above Loncoln Center.
Tickets and additional information is available online.
MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE HOLIDAY RUSH; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGER FROM 9 COUNTRIES.
