Alexander Elliott takes on Barber in Santa Barbara

Alexander Elliott as the Barber of Sevile

Barihunk Alexander Elliott will perform the title role in Rossini's The Barber of Seville at Opera Santa Barbara, which hasn't performed the audience favorite since 2001. The American baritone will be joined by mezzo-soprano Cassandra Zoé Velasco, tenor Andrew Bidlack and Nathan Stark as Basilio. Opera Santa Barbara’s Artistic & General Director Kostis Protopapas conducts the production.

Performances are on March 2nd and 4th and tickets are available online. 

The Barber of Seville premiered in Rome in 1816 with the title Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione (The Useless Precaution). Rossini's opera recounts the events of the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais that revolve around the clever and enterprising character named Figaro, the barber of the title. Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, composed 30 years earlier in 1786, is based on the second part of the Beaumarchais trilogy.

Other operas based on the first play were composed by Giovanni Paisiello (1782), Nicolas Isouard (1796) and Francesco Morlacchi (1816). Though the work of Paisiello triumphed for a time, only Rossini's version has stood the test of time and continues to be a mainstay of operatic repertoire.

Elliott next heads to the Orlando Philharmonic to sing Manuel De Falla's Master Peter’s Puppet Show. The one-act opera combines puppets and real characters adapted from one of the episodes of Don Quixote. There is a single performance on April 7th and tickets are available online.

Watch barihunk George Humphreys in world premiere of In Parenthesis

George Humphreys (left) and Andrew Bidlack (right) in In Parenthesis

Iain Bell's new opera In Parenthesis received its world premiere on May 13th at the Welsh National Opera with barihunk George Humphreys in the key role of Lieutenant Jenkins. The all-star cast also included hunkentenor Andrew Bidlack in the major role of Private John Ball, Peter Coleman-Wright in the Bard of Brittannia, Alexandra Deshorties is the Bard of Germania and the Queen of the Woods and Graham Clark is the Marne Sergeant.

It wraps up performance on July 1 at the Royal Opera House in London, but will be available worldwide for viewing on The Opera Platform at 8pm CET on July 1st, and then available to view online for free for six months. (3 PM EST, Noon PST).

The opera is an adaptation of the epic poem In Parenthesis by Welsh poet, writer and artist David Jones. The libretto centers around Private John Ball and his comrades in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who are posted to the Somme. In Mametz Wood they enter a strange realm – outside of time, dream-like but deadly. Rather than simply reporting the horrors of the Somme, the story dares to offer hope. Even here amongst all of the destruction there is a fragile flowering of regeneration and re-birth. Bell’s score combines traditional Welsh song with moments of other-worldliness, terror, humor and transcendence.

T. S. Eliot called In Parenthesis "a work of genius." W. H. Auden considered it "...the greatest book about the First World War" that he had read, a work in which Jones did "for the British and the Germans what Homer did for the Greeks and the Trojans" in "a masterpiece" comparable in quality to The Divine Comedy. 

There will also be screenings across the U.K., including at the Pontio in Bangor on July 3, the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff on July 6,  the Theatr Gwaun in Fishguard on July 9,  The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth July 16, and the Theatr Colwyn in Colwyn Bay on November 22.

Ricky Ian Gordon's new opera Morningstar premieres in Cincinnati

Morgan Smith (left) and Andrew Lovato (right)

The Cincinnati Opera is presenting its first world premiere in 50 years with Ricky Ian Gordon's Morningstar, which opens on June 30th and runs through July 19th. The cast features two barihunks familiar to readers of this site, Morgan Smith as Aaron Greenspan and Andrew Lovato as Harry Engel. The cast also includes Twyla Robinson as Becky, Elizabeth Pojanowski as Sadie, Elizabeth Zharoff as Esther, Jennifer Zetlan as Fanny and hunkentenor Andrew Bidlack as Irving Tashman.

The libretto was adapted from Sylvia Regan’s 1940 play about Russian Jewish immigrants living in New York City's Lower East Side in the early 20th century. The story revolves are eh 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire where 146 workers perished, most of whom were Jewish and Italian immigrant women. Gordon's grandmother, Rebecca Lieberman, who worked at the sweatshop survived because she was home sick the day of the fire.

Gordon teamed up with libbretis William M. Hoffman, who wrote the play As Is and the libretto for The Ghosts of Versailles to compose the piece for the Lyric Opera of Chicago. That effort failed to materialize, but the opera got a second chance in 2012, when Opera Fusion: New Works teamed up with the Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music to present the work at a workshop for unproduced contemporary operas.

Tickets and additional cast information is available online. 

A Barihunk Before My Very Eyes

I love the San Francisco Opera, but I'm always a little critical of them for not hiring better looking baritones. Other opera companies on the Left Coast seem to have no problem, most notably the Seattle Opera, San Diego Opera, Los Angeles Opera and, of course, the Sante Fe Opera (who remain in the barihunk stratosphere unchallenged).

Gabriele Viviani is an Italian baritone making his American debut in this production. He hails from Puccini's hometown of Lucca and regularly sings Marcello in La Boheme. So far, he has no real barihunk roles under his belt, but maybe he'll come back to SF Opera as Don Giovanni or Zurga in Pearl Fishers.

I saw the final dress rehearsal of SF Opera's Lucia di Lammermoor and my friends were all commenting about how cute tenor Andrew Bidlack was. It wasn't until I saw Lucia broadcast on the JumboTron at AT&T Park that I realized our Enrico was quite the barihunk. He does look like a little like a 70s rock star with his long, blonde hair, but who cares.