Barihunk duo alternating Guglielmo at Palais Garnier

Edwin Crossley-Mercer

Barihunks Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Philippe Sly will be alternating the role of Guglielmo at the beautiful Palais Garnier in Paris from September 12 to October 21. As an added bonus, Sly's performance dates also feature barihunk Paulo Szot as Don Alfonso!

Philippe Sly

The innovative production is being directed by the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, who is using a double cast of singers and dancers to marry song and dance. The stage design is fairly minimal with plexiglass screens suspended on either side, providing plenty of space for the singers and dancers to navigate individually or as a group.

Paulo Szot and his dancer double

De Keersmaeker explained her concept of the opera to Wannes Gyselinck, the senior editor of rekto:verso, "The function of dance is to underline the tension between text and music, and even at times to emphasize it...This duplication creates a third visible voice alongside the music and the text. It was above all because of the music that, despite my doubts about opera as a medium, I accepted the Paris Opera's invitation: it is so full of movement, both bodily and emotional. Taking music as a starting point, I hope to attain a higher degree of abstraction, and through it discover the essence of the work. In most productions, the beauty and depth of the music is drowned under draperies, costumes, doors that open and close."

Tickets and additional cast information is available online.

Franco Cerri makes the case for a sexy Scarpia

Franco Cerri taking some time off at Puccini Festival

Italian barihunk Franco Cerri is at the Festival Pucciniano at the composer's home base of Torre del Lago, where is singing in Tosca, La Rondine and La bohème. We had to share his latest picture from the beach, which made us wonder if both Tosca and Mimi chose the wrong guy.

Franco Cerri sings Scarpia's Te Deum from Tosca:

He sings Marcello in La bohème, Crébillon in La Rondine and Sciarrone in Tosca. He is working on Scarpia for a future performance and you can enjoy a preview in the video. If we were Tosca, we'd put down the knife and take our chances on the police chief!

Barihunk trio reaches Grange Festival's new vocal competition

Božidar Smiljanić, Dominic Sedgwick and Nick Mogg

Barihunks Božidar Smiljanić, Dominic Sedgwick and Nick Mogg are amongst the 12 semi-finalists for the recently launched Grange Festival International Singing Competition.

Formerly the Hampshire National Singing Competition, which was last held in 2013, the competition offers singers aged 33 or under the chance to win cash prizes and a role in a future production by the Grange Festival.

The first prize winner will receive £7,500, while the second and third prizes are worth £5,000 and £2,500. All other finalists will win £1,000, and the winners of the Song Prize and the Audience Prize will receive £2,500 and £2,000 respectively.

 

Participants will give public performances, culminating in a performance with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and will have the chance to draw on the experience of members of the jury through seminars and masterclasses throughout the competition.

The jury will include Dame Felicity Palmer, patron of the competition; director John Copley; accompanist and coach Roger Vignoles; Jonathan Groves, managing director of Groves Artists; Heather Duncan, head of concerts and programming at Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; and Scott Cooper, director of artistic administration at the Grange Festival. It will be chaired by the Grange Festival’s artistic director, Michael Chance.

Peter Trautwein to perform at 2017 Classic Meets Fetish

Peter Trautwein and performers fro Classic Meets Fetish

Barihunk Peter Trautwein will perform at the 2017 Classic Meets Fetish concert on September 7th in Berlin, Germany. The concert is a charitable fundraiser for Berlin-based organizations who help those with HIV/AIDS. Last year, the concert raised money EU2000 each for the Berliner Aidshilfe, which works with HIV prevention and testing, and the Hospiz Tauwerk, who provide assistance to those dying of AIDS. 

Cellist George Kroneis, who will perform again this year

The concert assembles a small group of professional international musicians, including singers and instrumentalists who will perform everything from Bach and Vivaldi to music from Star Wars. Trautwein will perform the Torreador's aria from Bizet's Carmen.

Other performers this year include organist Martin Carl, cellist Paul Leather, pianist Jack Parton, flutist Ash Hodge, pianist Greg Winn, cellist George Kroneis and recorder player Denis Chevalier.

Tickets are available online.

Rodney Earl Clarke releasing debut album "Glorious Quest"

Rodney Earl Clarke

British barihunk Rodney Earl Clarke is releasing his debut album, Glorious Quest, a collection of the greatest songs from American musical theater. The album focuses on the composers that solidified the modern story-driven, integrated art genre that we now enjoy.

Selections include Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’, If I Loved You, Some Enchanted Evening and You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel. He is joined by the pianist Christopher Gould. You can purchase a copy HERE.

You can hear Clarke live on August 23, when he performs at the Proms in Dvořák’s haunting Symphony No. 9. Originally devised by Gerard McBurney and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, this newly remounted Beyond the Score® performance combines actors, projections and live musical examples to explore the history of this enduringly popular orchestral classic. Additional information is available online.

Zachary Gordin releasing CD of Reynaldo Hahn

Zachary Gordin

Barihunk Zachary Gordin is releasing a CD of music by composer Reynaldo Hahn accompanied by his frequent collaborator Bryan Nies on the piano. The CD will be released on October 1st and is available for pre-order.

Gordin and Nies began their collaboration with a less than perfect production of Puccini’s Tosca, but recovered to join forces for numerous concerts, opera productions and recitals.
This disc marks the culmination of that artistic partnership, spanning more than ten years and many veins of repertoire.

This selection of mélodies, with a few exceptions (for musical flow and programming), is arranged chronologically and provides a window into Hahn’s development as a composer. The cycle Chansons Grises, written when he was only 12-15 years old, shows his prodigious talents and the influence of his teachers Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and Massenet from the Paris Conservatory, where Hahn was the rare exception as a particularly young student admitted into the esteemed school.

Barihunk trio in Sydney Chamber Opera's The Rape of Lucretia

Simon Lobelson, Nathan Lay and Jeremy Kleeman

The barihunk trio of Nathan Lay, Jeremy Kleeman and Simon Lobelson opened this weekend in the Sydney Chamber Opera's production of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. This is the company's first production of the opera, which is being directed by Kip Williams, winner of the coveted Helpmann Award for his work as a director. Additional performances are on August 21, 22, 24, 25 and 26 and tickets and additional cast information can be found online.

We introduced Nathan Lay, who sings Tarquinius, to readers last year. He has won the National Liederfest, Australian Music Events’ Opera Scholar of the Year, the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Aria,  placed third in the Herald Sun Aria and won the 2016 Australian International Opera Award. He has performed with Opera Australia, Melbourne Opera, and has recently completed the Victorian Opera Developing Artist Program along with his Master of Music at The University of Melbourne. He is featured prominently on Remembrance, a CD of songs and poems in memory of the soldiers that fought in World War One. During his time at Victorian Opera, he performed in Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, Puss in Boots, La traviata,  Hansel and Gretel,  The Magic Pudding – The Opera, Richard Mills’ Remembrance,  I Puritani, Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden featuring Meow Meow, Massenet's Cendrillon, and Mr. Mayor in Richard Mills’ world premiere of The Pied Piper.

Nathan Lay sings Britten's "Look! Through the port comes the moon astray":

We also introduced Jeremy Kleeman, who will be singing Collatinus, to readers last year after a reader submitted him to us. Kleeman is a graduate of Victorian Opera’s Developing Artist Program, and has a Master of Music in Opera Performance and Bachelor of Music from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. In 2014 and 2015, Jeremy was a scholar with Melba Opera Trust on the Joseph Sambrook Opera Scholarship, and was the 2016 recipient of the Dame Heather Begg Memorial Award. Upcoming engagements will include soloist in the Duruflé Requiem with the Melbourne Bach Choir, Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea with Pinchgut Opera and soloist in Nielsen’s Symphony no. 3 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Roles with the Victorian Opera have included Lord Valton in I puritani, Marquis D’Obigny in La traviata, Rapunzel’s Prince in Into the Woods, Jonas Fogg in Sweeney Todd, Mother in Seven Deadly Sins and Albert the Pudding in the Green Room award-winning world premiere The Magic Pudding – The Opera.


Simon Lobelson has been featured three times on Barihunks, dating back to 2008! He was born in Sydney to Egyptian parents and spent his childhood in Brussels before moving to Australia. He received his Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Sydney and his postgraduate degree at London’s Royal College of Music. He was a finalist in the 2011 Wagner Society Competition and a Tait Memorial Trust 2011 Thornton Foundation Award recipient. He is also a coach at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Lobelson has performed over 70 operatic roles including Doctor Falke in Die Fledermaus, Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Geôlier in Dialogues des Carmélites, Osmin in Mozart’s Zaide, and Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff. His recordings include The Sofa, Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Nicolai Mass with the Israel Camerata, The Fairy Queen and Charpentier’s David et Jonathas. He has also been featured on broadcasts for Classic FM, Fine Music FM, Foxtel and BBC Radio 3, as well as soundtracks to exhibitions at both the Australian and British Museums, and on the inflight soundtrack for British Airways and Qantas flights.

Barihunk Benjamin Appl nominated for Gramophone Best Solo Vocalist award

Benjamin Appl's Heimat

The brilliant young recitalist Benjamin Appl has been nominated for a 2017 Gramophone Award as best Solo Vocalist for his album Heimat with accompanist James Bailieu. The recording features music by Brahms, Britten, Grieg, Ireland, Poulenc, Reger, Schubert, Adolf and Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Warlock and Wolf.

Other nominees in the category include Florian Boesch and Roger Vignoles for Krenek's Reisebuch aus den österrichischen Alpen and Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach for Brahms' Vier ernste Gesänge.

The German barihunk was a BBC New Generation Artist and an ECHO Rising Star artist for the 2015/16 season, appearing in recital at major European venues. He became an exclusive SONY Classical recording artist in May 2016 and won the Gramophone Young Artist of the Year Award in 2016.

Benjamin Appl sings Schubert's Der Lindenbaum:

He is currently performing Schubert recitals in the U.K., including on August 17th at the Edinburgh International Festival's Queen’s Hall with Schumann and Grieg, and at Ireland's Kilkenny Festival where he'll perform Winterreise on August 19th and a program with soprano Ailish Tynan and tenor Robin Tritschler on August 20th.

Introducing Nicholas Martorano; Performing Chicago area recital

Nicholas Martorano

American barihunk Nicholas Martorano, who graduated with a Master of Music degree in vocal arts last year from the University of Southern California, is new to our site.

Martorano will be returning to his homestate of Illinois to perform a recital in Morris, which is about an hour outside of Chicago. He'll be joined by Alexandra Martinez, Liya Khaimova and Napat Mingkwanyuen in a concert of arias, duets and ensembles from opera and musical theater. The four singers were all students together at USC.

Martorano first began singing on stage when he appeared as Winthrop in a Westmont High School production of  “The Music Man.” He developed his love for opera while in high school and opted to attend Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in vocal performance.

The concert is Friday, August 18th at the First Presbyterian Church in Morris, Illinois.

Barihunk Karl Daymond collapses and dies at hearing where he came to speak about saving arts venue

Karl Daymond

[REPRINTED FROM BBC NEWS]

An opera singer collapsed and died while arguing to save an arts venue.

Karl Daymond fell ill just before he was due to speak at a meeting about Drill Hall in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, where he had directed shows.

He was a passionate supporter of the arts who wanted to ensure the future of the venue.
Chepstow mayor Dale Rooke said he was "one of those larger than life characters" with a "huge heart and a huge passion".

"He will be sorely missed and it's a huge, huge loss to Chepstow," he added.

Mr Rooke said Mr Daymond was "quite stressed" about speaking at the meeting, which was organised to allow locals to have their say on the future of the hall.

It came amid a row over whether the venue's ownership should be transferred from the local authority into the hands of a newly-formed charity.

'Emotional' meeting

The hall secured £50,000 from the Big Lottery in February to fund renovations with plans for a further £1m bid dependent on who owned it in future.

Mr Rooke said: "It was an emotional meeting but we knew it was going to be. About 80 people were present.

"It was particularly traumatic as when he collapsed, everyone was stuck in the council chamber and lots of the people in the room knew Karl."

Mr Daymond trained at The National Opera Studio before touring the world with both the English and Welsh national operas.

His career included performing at the BBC Proms in 1999 and 2002, and twice at the Royal Variety Performance, in 1982 performing The Pirate King from Pirates of Penzance, and as a soloist in 2004.

He appeared with Hollywood star Dustin Hoffman in a 1989 production of the Merchant of Venice, and took a starring role in Leonard Bernstein's Grammy-nominated one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti in 2001.

Barihunk quartet opens NY City Opera season

Kevin Short, Kenneth Overton, Christopher Job and Alexander Birch Ellliott (Clockwise top left)

New York City Opera is opening its 2017/2018 season with Puccini's La fanciulla del West starring the barihunk quartet of Kevin Short as Jack Rance, Alexander Birch Elliott as Sonora, Christopher Job as Ashby and Kenneth Overton as Jake Wallace. They will be joined by soprano Kristin Sampson as Minnie and tenor Jonathan Burton as Dick Johnson.

The production is a collaboration between New York City Opera, Opera Carolina, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, and Teatro di Giglio di Lucca. Performances are on September 6, 8, 10 and 12 at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater. Tickets are available online.

Based on American playwright David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West, the opera tells the story of love and redemption in a mining camp during the California Gold Rush. Puccini's La fanciulla del West had its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1910, and the opera has been a favorite of New York audiences ever since.

The remainder of New York City Opera's season includes the New York premiere of Pepe Martinez’s mariachi opera Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, Montemezzi’s  L’Amore  dei Tre Re, the long-awaited US premiere of Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain, the New York premiere of Picker’s Dolores Claiborne, and a double-bill of Donizetti’s Il Pigmalione and  Rameau’s Pigmalion.

Jacques Imbrailo to premiere new Danish opera Brødre

Jacques Imbrailo

Jacques Imbrailo will premiere composer Daníel Bjarnason's new opera Brødre (Brothers) at the Danish National Opera on August 16th. The opera is based on Susanne Bier’s film Brothers, which is part of the Musikhuset Aarhus’ Bier Trilogy, in which the acclaimed film trilogy by Susanne Bier is adapted into three different genres. Brothers will be performed as an opera, After the Wedding as musical theatre and Open Hearts as modern dance.

Bier not only directed the 2004 film version of Brothers, but she also co-wrote the screenplay for the opera adaptation with Anders Thomas Jensen. The opera will be directed by Kasper Holten.

The tale relates the story of two brothers who both fall in love with the same woman. While the elder brother is on military service in Afghanistan, leaving his family behind in Denmark, the younger brother – who has just came out of prison – ends up spending a lot of time with the family. When they are informed that the elder brother is missing in action, a love grows between the younger brother and the sister-in-law out of solitude and despair. And when the hero returns from war, everything changes.

Performances are on August 16, 18, 20 and 22.  Tickets are available online.

Barihunk trio in live stream of "La pietra del paragone" from Rossini Festival

Gianluca Margheri and Paolo Bordogna

The barihunk duo Gianluca Margheri, Paolo Bordogna and Davide Luciano will appear in a live stream of La pietra del paragone (The Touchstone) from the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro on August 11th. Gianluca Margheri sings the Conte Asdrubale, Paolo Bordogna sings Pacuvio and Davide Luciano sings Macrobio. The cast also includes La pietra del paragone as the Marchesa Clarice, Maxim Mironov as Cavalier Giocondo, Aurora Faggioli as Baronessa Aspasia, Marina Monzó as Donna Fulvia and William Corrò as Fabrizio.

Much of the action taken place in and around a swimming pool, so you'll get to see some barihunk skin in this popular production.

La pietra del paragone, which was Rossini's first major commission, was first performed at La Scala in Milan on September 26, 1812 and was an instant success. Despite its early success in Europe, the work did not receive its North American premiere until 1955 and not until 1963 in Britain, when it was performed at he St Pancras Town Hall.

In Rossini's comedy, a wealthy man devises a test to separate his true friends from those who love him only for his money. Although “touchstone” is no longer regularly used in the English language, it is still alive in an Italian proverb that forms the basis of this comic opera. They say “Men have a touchstone to test gold, but gold is really the touchstone to test men.” (“L’uomo ha la pietra di paragone per saggiare l’oro, ma l’oro è la pietra di paragone per saggiare gli uomini.”) 

You can also watch the same Pier Luigi Pizzi production on Medici.TV with barihunk Marco Vinco as Il Conte Asdrubale, Paolo Bordogna as Pacuvio and Pietro Spagnoli and Macrobio.

Barihunk duo in Rossini Festival's Le siège de Corinthe

Luca Pisaroni, Nino Machaidze and Iurii Samoilov

The barihunk duo of bass-barihunk Luca Pisaroni in Mahomet II and Iurii Samoilov as Omar in Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe. They are joined by John Irvin as Cléomène, Nino Machaidze as Pamyra, Sergey Romanovsky as Néoclès, Carlo Cigni as Hiéros, Xabier Anduaga as Adraste and Cecilia Molinari as Ismène. Performances are on August 10, 13, 16 and 19 and tickets are available online.

The opera premiered at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on October 9, 1826 and was a partial rewrite of the composer's 1820 Italian opera, Maometto II, with exactly the same story and characters. The original version premiered in Naples on December 3, 1820.

The opera commemorates the siege and ultimate destruction of the town of Missolonghi in 1826 by Turkish during the ongoing Greek War of Independence (1821-1829). The reference to Corinth is an example of allegory, although Sultan Mehmed II had indeed besieged the city in the 1450s. This same incident, condemned throughout Western Europe for its cruelty, also inspired a prominent painting by Eugène Delacroix (Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi), and was mentioned in the writings of Victor Hugo. Lord Byron's 1816 poem The Siege of Corinth has little, if any, connection with the opera.

Luca Pisaroni sings "Sorgete... Duce di tanti eroi" from Maometto II:

On August 15, Pisaroni will also perform a recital of music by Schubert, Liszt and Rossini with Giulio Zappa at the piano. Tickets are available online. He returns to the US in December as Count Almaviva in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera. He rotates the role with fellow barihunk Mariusz Kwiecien.

Iurii Samoilov returns to his home base at Oper Frankfurt in October as Ned Keene in Britten's Peter Grimes. He remains with the company this season to perform Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosí fan tutte, Marullo in Verdi's Rigoletto and Dandini in Rossini's La Cenerentola.

Luis Alejandro Orozco in Maria de Buenos Aires in New Orleans, Fort Worth

Luis Alejandro Orozco

Barihunk Luis Alejandro Orozco, who just performed his signature role of  Payador Piazzolla's Maria de Buenos Aires with Mill City Summer Opera, will reprise the role with the New Orleans Opera's chamber series on September 9 and 10. The special performances will also include dinner and a post-performance tango dance party. 

The production will also feature soprano Catalina Cuervo, Milton Laayza in the role of Duende-Elf and Robert Lyall conducting musicians from the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. The piece, which is set in a theater-in-the-round, will be directed by Tomer Zvulun, the artistic Director of the Atlanta Opera.

Orozco will perform the piece again next Spring with the Fort Worth Opera with John de los Santos directing his unforgettable conception. Barihunk Paul La Rosa will be performing Payador with the director at San Diego Opera in January.

Sean Michael Plumb's debuts new website; Returns to Bayerische Staatsoper

Sean Michael Plumb (Photo Dario Acosta)

American barihunk Sean Michael Plumb has a new website and management page with Étude Arts. His website includes his new bio and schedule. He will be returning to the ensemble of the Bayerische Staatsoper for the 2017-18 season to sing Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Dandini in La cenerentola, and Prosdocimo in Il turco in Italia

He was a member of the Salzburg Festival’s Young Singers Project in 2016 and has been a young artist at The Glimmerglass Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Aspen Music Festival.

We featured Plumb back in 2012 when he made his national television debut in the HBO documentary “Renée Fleming: A YoungArts MasterClass.” He was honored by President Obama as a United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts at a ceremony at The White House and has garnered a multitude of awards for his singing including the Grand Prize of the 2016 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions

Highlights of Sean's 2017-18 season include the following performances:

Il Trittico (Marco) - Bayerische Staatsoper, December 2017 - January 2018, July 2018

Così fan tutte (Guglielmo) - Bayerische Staatsoper, March 2018

La cenerentola (Dandini) - Bayerische Staatsoper, March 2018

Liederabend - Munich, April 2018

Tristan und Isolde (Melot) - The Cleveland Orchestra, April 2018

Die Zauberflöte (Papageno) - Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, June 2018

Joseph Lattanzi to reprise lead role in Fellow Travelers

Joseph Lattanzi and Aaron Blake in Fellow Travelers

The Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced that barihunk Joseph Lattanzi will reprise the role of Hawkins Fuller in Gregory Spears' opera Fellow Travelers.

Fellow Travelers, which was written in collaboration with librettist Greg Pierce and director Kevin Newbury, was developed in a 2013 Opera Fusion workshop. Lattanzi sang both the workshops for the opera, as well as the world premiere at the Cincinnati Opera last year. Newbury will also direct the Chicago performances.

Joseph Lattanzi sings "Our very own home" from Fellow Travelers:

The cast will include tenor Jonas Hacker as Timothy Laughlin, who falls in love with Hawkins Fuller during the height of the McCarthy era in 1950s Washington D.C. Devon Guthrie will sing the role of Mary Johnson, Hawkins’s assistant and Timothy’s confidante.

This chamber work will be presented in four performances at the Athenaeum Theatre between March 17-25, 2018

You can catch Lattanzi as Sonora in Puccini's La Fanciulla del West at Virginia Opera from November 10-December 3. Performances will be in Norfolk, Richmond and Fairfax. 

Trio of barihunks joins Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program

Michael Adams, Timothy J. Bruno and Christopher Kenney (L-R)

The Washington National Opera has announced their incoming members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, which begins in September. Three low male voices will be included, including Michael Adams, who has been featured regularly on this site. Joining him will be bass Timothy J. Bruno and baritone Christopher Kenney.

This year's young artists will star in performances of Handel's Alcina and Rossini's The Barber of Seville at the Kennedy Center Opera House, participate in the American Opera Initiative Festival's Proving Up, a new opera by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, as well as appear in recitals and concerts across the Washington, D.C. region. Proving Up is based on a short story by Karen Russell, which tells the story of a Nebraskan family homesteading in the late 19th century.

Michael Adams sings "Pensa a chi geme" from Handel's Alcina:

Joining the trio of low voices will be tenor Frederick Ballentine, mezzo Eliza Bonet, mezzo Allegra De Vita, tenor Arnold Livingston Geis, soprano Leah Hawkins, pianist Paul Jarski, pianist Christopher Kenney, soprano Madison Leonard, tenor Alexander McKissick and soprano Alexandria Shiner.