Barihunk switch in Opera Philadelphia's Cold Mountain

Jarrett Ott

Opera Philadelphia has announced that Jarrett Ott will replace fellow barihunk Nathan Gunn as W.P. Inman for all five performances of Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain. The opera is being performed from  Februar 5-14 at the Academy of Music.

Nathan Gunn created the role in the August 2015 world premiere at The Santa Fe Opera, but had to pull out of the East Coast premiere due to a serious family illness.

Jarrett Ott, who is a popular singer on this site, is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and a member of Opera Philadelphia’s Emerging Artists Program. He has been involved with the development of Cold Mountain and the character of Inman for more than three years. He performed the role in two workshops in 2012 and 2013, sang with the full cast in March 2015 as part of a Works & Process presentation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and covered the role in both Santa Fe and Philadelphia. He began the 2015-2016 Season with Opera Philadelphia as Marchese D'Obigny in Verdi's La traviata.

The opera is based on Charles Frazier’s National Book Award-winning novel, Cold Mountain, which follows the American odyssey of W.P. Inman, a wounded Civil War soldier who deserts the Confederate Army at great peril to reunite with his love, Ada Monroe (which will be sung by mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard). Ada's once privileged life on Cold Mountain has become one of loneliness and deprivation. As Inman makes his way home, he wonders if the violence he has experienced has made him unworthy of love, and is forced to question just where his allegiance lies. Amidst the destruction of the American Civil War, a pivotal conflict in America’s history, the transformative journeys of Inman and Ada go to the very center of their souls.