Barihunk Trio in George Benjamin's new opera about Edward II

Stéphane Degout prepares for Lessons in Love and Violence

The Royal Opera will present the world premiere of George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence from May 10-26 at the Royal Opera House's mainstage in London. Benjamin's second opera is a co-production with six other opera houses and includes the team behind his highly successful Written on Skin.

Written on Skin has become the second most performed new opera in the 21st century. 

The cast for Lessons in Love and Violence will feature French barihunk Stéphane Degout as the King, Hungarian-Romanian barihunk Gyula Orendt as his lover Gaveston and Icelandic barihunk Andri Björn Róbertsson as a Madman. The remainder of the cast includes Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan as Isabel, British tenor Peter Hoare Mortimer and British tenor Samuel Boden as the Young King.

The project began two years ago, when the Royal Opera House commissioned George Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp to write a new work, following the huge success of Written on Skin, a medieval-set story in which the creation of an illuminated manuscript leads to adultery, murder and cannibalism.

Lessons in Love and Violence is a re-imagining of the life of Edward II and his doomed relationship with Piers Gaveston, the first Earl of Cornwall, and is presented as seven lessons seen through the eyes of the monarch’s two children. This is the second opera to be written in recent years based on the same topic, as Swiss composer Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini premiered his new opera about Edward II at the Deutsche Oper Berlin last year.

Lessons in Love and Violence will be performed at the Dutch National Opera in June 2018, Hamburg State Opera in April 2019 and at Opéra de Lyon in May 2019.

Barihunk switch in Oviedo's Pelléas et Mélisande

Baritone Edward Nelson

Gyula Orendt will will be replaced by fellow barihunk Edward Nelson in Ópera de Oviedo's upcoming performances of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. He'll be joined by Andrew Foster-Williams as Golaud, Anne-Catherine Gillet as Mélisande, Maxim Kuzmin-Karavaev as Arkel, Yulia Mennibaeva as Geneviève and Eleonora de la Peña as Yniold. The opera runs from January 28-February 3.

Edward Nelson and Ingeborg Gilebo in the Tower Scene from Pellées:

Nelson made his European debut at the Norwegian National Opera on April 7th as a replacement in the title role of the same opera. The performance was the first time that the company had performed the opera.

Pelléas et Mélisande was the composer’s only opera and is based on the Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck’s play of the same name. The story is about lost love and forbidden relationships.

Thomas Weinhappel and Sam Robert-Smith from the 2018 Barihunks Calendar/Photo Book

ONLY 18 DAYS LEFT TO ORDER our 2018 Barihunks Calendar, which includes 20 of opera's sexiest men is now available for purchase HERE. In response to reader demand, we've also added a Barihunks Photo Book this year, which includes additional photos that don't appear in the calendar. You can purchase that HERE. The New Year is approaching faster than you think.

Björn Bürger's Figaro is a box office hit at Glyndebourne; Watch live

Björn Bürger as Figaro

The big hit of the Glyndebourne season is barihunk Björn Bürger's Figaro in Rossini's Barber of Seville, which runs through July 17th with limited availability. The cast also includes Taylor Stayton as Almaviva and Danielle de Niese as Rosina. You can check for tickets HERE.

This appears to be one of those career defining moments for a young singer, as crowds and critics have responded enthusiastically. Mark Valencia in What's on Stage wrote, "The handsome young baritone exudes elegant bonhomie and fourth-wall-breaking razzle-dazzle, and he delivers Rossini's tongue-twisters with an eloquence it would be hard to better." Richard Fairman in the Financial Times wrote, "What fun there is comes from a well-chosen cast. At the top of the class is Björn Bürger’s ace Figaro, sung with brilliance, precision and a nonstop cheery grin, as if it is all no effort at all."

If you can't catch it live, you have two chances to watch in remotely. If you're in the UK, you can see it in a theatre in a live broadcast on Tuesday, June 21 at 6:30 PM. You can find screening near you by clicking HERE.

If you live elsewhere, the performance will be streamed live online on the same day HERE.

Next up at Glyndebourne is Mozart's Marriage of Figaro featuring the barihunk duo of Davide Luciano as Figaro and Gyula Orendt as Count Almaviva. It runs from July 3 to August 24.

Gyula Orendt in live stream of Orfeo

Gyula Orendt in Orfeo

Gyula Orendt will headline a live stream performance of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in a co-production between Roundhouse Digital Productions and the Royal Opera House. The Roundhouse Theatre was a railway repair shed from 1847-1960 and now hosts performing arts productions.

The performance will be available on Wednesday, January 21st at 7.15pm GMT/10:15 AM PST/1:15. You can watch the performance at the Royal Opera House YouTube channel or on the BBC Arts website.

Joining Gyula Orendt in the cast is soprano Mary Bevan as Euridice, along with Jette Parker Young Artists James Platt as Charon and Rachel Kelly as Proserpina. Former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company Michael Boyd directs in his operatic debut, with a production that features post-graduate students of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and participants of East London Dance.

Gyula Orendt and Mary Bevan

Orfeo, which originally premiered on February 24, 1607 in Mantua, is considered the first great opera. Monteverdi incorporated existing musical forms, such as madrigals and the newly developed recitative and the result was considered revolutionary.

The eight performances are all sold out, so this may be your only chance to see the performance.

Glyndebourne's La finta Giardiniera broadcast on BBC Radio 3

Gyula Orendt

BBC 3 radio will broadcast Mozart's La finta Giardiniera on their initial Opera on 3 offering on Monday, September 22 at 7:15 PM GMT/2:15 PM EST. The performance is from this summer's Glyndebourne Festival and includes barihunk Gyula Orendt as Nardo and hunkentenor Joel Prieto as Count Belfiore with the Age of Enlightenment Orchestra conducted by Robin Ticciati.

Written when he was only eighteen, Mozart comic opera La finta Giardiniera on Goldoni's is based on the play Pamela nubile. The story follows seven characters in search of love, involving disguise, and recognition of both identities and emotions - trying to discover what is real and what is 'finta'.

Gyula Orendt sings Gounod's "Queen of Love":

Martin Handley presents, and during the interval discusses the opera with Mozart specialist Professor Cliff Eisen. You can tune in HERE.

Gyula Orendt, who is of Hungarian-Romanian  descent, studied singing at the Transilvania Music University in Brasov, Romania, and completed his studies at the Academy of Music Franz Liszt in Budapest, where he was also trained as a singing teacher. He won at the Francisco Viñas Competition in Barcelona the Mozart Prize and the prize for oratorio/lieder.


Since 2013, he has been a member of the Berlin State Opera, where his roles since have included Silvano in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, Papageno, Figaro in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Cesare Angelotti in Puccini's Tosca and Tempo/Consiglio in Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo. He made his Royal Opera debut in 2012 singing the Gamekeeper in Dvorak's Rusalka. He returns to London this season to sing the title role in Monteverdi's Orfeo at the Roundhouse.

Papageno!!! Papageno!!! Sarastro!!! & A Barihunk Gathering in Minnesota

Some days we open our inbox and a theme just seems to appear. Today it was barihunks who are performing Papageno or Sarastro in Mozart's "Magic Flute."

The Opera Theatre Company in Ireland is touring the opera to a number of venues. The Sarastro is one of our favorite barihunks, Matthew Trevino, who also happens to in our Barihunks charity calendar in September. The opening night performance on Friday, November 25 is already sold out, but there are still tickets remaining for the remaing 19 performances, which run through December 10.

The Papageno is Owen Gilhooly and the production is performed in an English translation. Visit the Opera Theatre Company website for additional information or to purcharse tickets.

David Adam Moore (Papageno) and Jamie-Rose Guarrine (Papagena) (Photo by Mark Matson)

Another barihunk featured prominently in our calendar (and showing some skin) is the always entertaining David Adam Moore. Moore is a performer who always brings something extra to a performance, whether singing Mozart, Rossini or contemporary opera. He just wrapped up a run as Papageno with the Austin Lyric Opera. If you're in Texas and are kicking yourself with your cowboy boots for missing him, you're in luck. Moore is returning in April to perform Timur in Puccini's "Turandot" opposite yet another calendar model, Craig Verm,who shows off his amazing chest in our May feature along with Douglas Carpenter, Justin Hopkins and Dan Kempson (you won't want to miss it!).

By the way, you won't want to miss the AMAZING Turandot of Lise Lindstrom, who practically owns this role right now and performed the role to great acclaim at the Met. It's impressive that a smaller company like Austin Lyric Opera has managed to engage her. Buy your tickets now at their website, as this production will undoubtedly be sold out.

Gyula Orendt

We hadn't heard of Gyula Orendt until a reader brought him to our attention. The Transylvania-born singer studied at Franz Liszt University in Budapest. Orendt won numerous awards at the Viñas vocal competition in Barcelona in January 2010, including those for Oratorio/Lied, Mozart singing and Dalton-Baldwin prize. The baritone is a member of the ensemble of the Berlin State Opera House this seasons where he will perform Papageno, among other roles. Next year, he will also perform the Gamekeeper in Dvorak's "Rusalka" at the Royal Opera in London.

Lastly, we had to share the following picture from the Minnesota Opera. As we previously posted, the world premiere of Kevin Puts' "Silent Night" was full of amazing baritones and, better yet, barihunks. One of the things that we like about operas based on war stories, is that they inevitably have a lot of beefcake to enjoy and "Silent Night" is no exception.

Top Photo: Troy Cook, Gabriel Preisser, Ben Wager, Michael Nyby and Craig Irvin

Of course, "Silent Night" has also been a critical success and has instantly become a welcome addition to the repertory. We highly recommend that you read the reviews from the Minneapolis Examiner and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Regular readers of this site will also know that Troy Cook is one of only a handful of singers to appear on this site in the Full Monty. Cooks revealing debut on this site last summer was from a performance of Poulenc's "Les mamelles de Tirésias" and it continues to be a popular post with readers.

Please remember that all proceeds from our Barihunks calendar is going to benefit young artist programs that produce singers like Matthew Trevino, Troy Cook, Gabriel Preisser, Mike Nyby, David Adam Moore and others. Holiday shopping season officially begins this week, so click HERE and order your calendar today. Join us in making this a special holiday for young artists and you can enjoy looking at them ALL YEAR.

Your input, suggestions and occasional corrections are always welcome at Barihunks@gmail.com