Barihunk bliss in Seattle's Eugene Onegin

Michael Adams, John Moore and David Leigh

If you want to start off the new year with some barihunk bliss then you might want to head to the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle Opera will be rotating barihunks as the title character in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin running from January 11-25 with John Moore and Michael Adams both taking on the charming, but jaded character.

Also in the cast will be bass-barihunk David Leigh as Prince Gremin, who sings the beautiful aria "Lyubvi vse vozrasty pokorny," where he tells Onegin how love can change a life at any age, and how he is madly in love with Tatiana.

The remainder of the cast includes Colin Ainsworth as Lenski, Marjukka Tepponen and Marina Costa-Jackson as Tatyana, Melody WIlson as Olga, Meredit Arwady as Filipievna, Margaret Gawrysiak as Larina and Martin Bakari and Triquet. Tickets are available online.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Eugene Onegin at The Met:

Tchaikovsky based his opera on Alexander Pushkin's s novel, which was written in verse and is considered a classic of Russian literature. The idea of setting the story to music was suggested to the composer by the great Russian mezzo-soprano Yelizaveta Lavrovskaya. Tchaikovsky arranged much of the verse himself into the libretto with help from his friend Konstantin Shilovsky.

The opera was first performed in Moscow in 1879 and has remained popular since its premiere.

A number of barihunks have sung Onegin to great acclaim, including Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Mariusz Kwiecien, Nathan Gunn, Simon Keenlyside, Artur Rucinski, Peter Mattei, Paulo Szot, Tobias Greenhalgh, Christopher Maltman, Günter Papendell and Franco Pomponi.   

Other companies performing the opera in 2020 include the Norwegian Opera, Rome Opera, Finnish National Opera, Israeli Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Munich Opera Festival and Opera Australia.        

Rufus Wainwright's "Hadrian" to premiere with adult warning

Thomas Hampson and David Leigh (costume sketch courtesy of Canadian Opera)

Rufus Wainwright's second opera, "Hadrian," will open on October 13th at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. The opera is about a gay relationship in ancient Rome between the Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous. Daniel MacIvor's libretto was inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar's novel "Memoirs of Hadrian," which Wainwright read twenty years ago.

"Antinous and Hadrian," an opera based on the same story, was recently completed by composer Clint Borzoni and librettist Edward Ficklin, and was presented in New York in 2017 in concert form. You can hear the beautiful love scene HERE.

This is pop singer Rufus Wainwright's second attempt at opera, after "Prima Donna," which premiered at the New York City Opera in 2009, featuring barihunk Randal Turner.

Wainwright's "Hadrian" comes with an adult warning and features a musical interlude where Hadrian and Antinous make love. The cast includes the ageless barihunk Thomas Hampson as Hadrian, tenor Isaiah Bell as his lover Antinous, Karita Mattila as Plotina, bass-barihunk David Leigh as Turbo, Ambur Braid as Sabina and Ben Heppner as Dinarchus. The piece is sung in English and Latin.

The story is about Emperor Hadrian, who is devastated after his lover Antinous drowns in the Nile River. While matters of state encroach on his grief and advisers clamor for war against a radical new threat to the Empire, Hadrian slips out of time to re-encounter the vision and reality of Antinous—and learn the truth about what happened on the Nile.

There are seven performances between October 13-27 and tickets are available online.

Seven baritones/basses in Met Semi-Finals

Zach Owen, Jared Bybee and Michael Adams

Seven of the seventeen winners of the Metropolitan Opera regional competitions were baritones or basses, many of whom are familiar to our readers. Those who advanced will perform in the semi-finals on March 15th in a closed competition before judges. The winners will then advance to the Grand Finals Concert on March 22nd and perform two arias with conductor Fabio Luisi and the Met Orchestra.

The seven low male voices in the semi-finals are Michael Adams, baritone (Gulf Coast Region: Fort Worth, Texas); Nicholas Brownlee, bass-baritone (Western Region: Mobile, Alabama); David Leigh, bass (Eastern Region: New York, New York); Zachary Owen, bass-baritone (Midwest Region: Stillman Valley, Illinois); Reginald Smith, Jr., baritone (Southeast Region: Atlanta, Georgia); Matthew Turner, bass (Mid-South Region: Jackson, Kentucky) and Jared Bybee, baritone (Middle Atlantic Region: Modesto, California)

The Grand Finals Concert, which is held in the Met auditorium and open to the public, will be hosted by soprano Angela Meade, who herself first came to prominence in 2007 as a winner of the National Council Auditions. Meade will also sing an aria with the orchestra while the judges are deliberating. At the end of the concert, winners will be announced, each of whom will receive an individual cash prize of $15,000.

Other semi-finalists include mezzo-soprano Jenni Bank, soprano Sarah Cambidge, soprano Marina Costa-Jackson, tenor William Davenport, mezzo-soprano  Allegra De Vita, tenor Joseph Dennis, soprano Kathryn Henry, mezzo-soprano Anne Maguire, mezzo-soprano Deniz Uzun,  and mezzo-soprano Virginie Verrez.

Tickets for the Grand Finals Concert begin at $25 and may be purchased at the Met Box Office, by phone at 212-362-6000, or online at www.metopera.org.