Happy Birthday, Philip Glass!!!

Martin Acrainer in Orphée (left) and Spuren der Verirrten (right)

Nary a year goes by where we don't celebrate the birthday of American composer Philip Glass who turns 77 today.

Many of his 20+ operas have become staples of the standard repertory including Hydrogen Jukebox, Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, Akhnaten, and The Voyage. We've featured many of the more obscure operas on this site, including Kepler, Les Enfants Terribles, The Perfect American, Orphée and Galileo Galilei, which have become popular vehicles for barihunks like Martin Achrainer, Philip Cutlip, Matthew Worth, Nicholas Nelson and Timothy McDevitt.

Glass was born in Baltimore and studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble.

Guillaume Andrieux in Philip Glass' Les Enfants Terribles

Glass likes speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.

Upcoming performances of Glass operas include The Trial, which will run at the Theater Magdeburg from April 1-May 8 with barihunk Johnny Herford as Josef K. In the U.S., Hydrogen Jukebox will play at the Long Beach Opera from May 30-June 7. Perhaps the most popular Glass opera this season is Akhnaten, which will play in Antwerp in February, Gent in March, Heidelberg in March and Maastricht in June.

Guillaume Andrieux appearing in Eötvös opera

Guillaume Andrieux in Philip Glass' Les Enfants Terribles

French barihunk Guillaume Andrieux, who we introduced to readers in a performance of Benoît Mernier’s La Dispute, will perform Roger in Peter Eötvös' opera Le Balcon from May 20-24 at the Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris.

Le Balcon, Peter Eötvös' second opera, is based on Jean Genet’s play of the same name. He is best known in the United States for his opera Angels in America, which starred barihunk Thomas Meglioranza in New York and David Adam Moore in Fort Worth and Los Angeles.

Albane Carrère & Guillaume Andrieux

The composer wrote of the piece, "With Genet, one can take it literally; a revolution rages in the streets, the Palais Royal is blown up, while the customers in the specially equipped salons of the brothel 'Le Balcon' are dressed with the properties and costumes of major social positions: They want to become a bishop, judge, general, even if for only half an hour. The girls help them, and Madame collects the money for this dubious pleasure. The piece is a wonderful, constantly sparkling role play, a theatre within the theatre...My music sometimes 'is also dressed' with 'French-style manners,' but most important to me was to let the marvelously frivolous, poetic language of Genet remain understandable. I therefore used many grotesque, comedy-like cabaret-music elements, and sometimes my music is close to the French chanson, with Fréhel, Jacques Brel, Yves Montand, Leo Ferré being my models."

In December, Andrieux can be seen as Raoul de Gardefeu in Offenbach's La Vie parisienne at Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg.

Guillaume Andrieux & Stéphane Degout in premiere of La Dispute

Albane Carrère & Guillaume Andrieux

The last time that we featured French barihunk Stéphane Degout on this site, he was baring it all for a performance as Hamlet at the Theater an der Wien. Now he's in Brussels for composer Benoît Mernier’s second opera La Dispute, which was commissioned by the Théâtre de la Monnaie. The opera is based on the comedic play by the French dramatist Marivaux and explores the inconsistencies of love and wondering if they stem from men or women. Upon its premiere in 1744, the play was considered a funny, erotic and cruel masterpiece by critics, but received poorly by the public.

Degout is joined in the cast by a barihunk new to this site, French singer Guillaume Andrieux as Mesrin.

Stéphane Degout

The opera's plot centers around the burning philosophical issue of infidelity and a diabolical experiment that brings together four youngsters raised in isolation from the world. Before our eyes, they discover love and their first betrayals. For this work, the Belgian composer collaborated closely with the librettists Ursel Herrmann and Joël Lauwers. This gave him the opportunity to again grapple with the awakening of desire which was a theme in his first opera Frühlings Erwachen from 2007.

Performances run from March 5-19 and tickets are available online.