Cody Quattlebaum only baritone to advance in Met semi-finals

Cody Quattlebaum

Bass-barihunk Cody Quattlebaum was the only low male voice to advance in the Metropolitan Opera Audition semi-finals on Sunday.

Other singers who advances were tenor Kyle van Schoonhoven, soprano Vanessa Vasquez, mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, soprano Natalie Image, soprano Kirsten MacKinnon, soprano Gabriella Reyes de Ramirez, and tenor Richard Smagur.

On March 19th, the nine finalists will perform in a concert on the Met stage. Tickets are available online. The judges will choose five winners who are awarded a grand prize of $15,000 each, and the remaining finalists will each receive $5,000.

Past winners include Thomas Hampson, Jessye Norman, Grace Bumbry, Teresa Stratas, Shirley Verrett,  Richard Stilwell, Frederica von Stade, Deborah Voigt, Stanford Olsen, Susan Graham, Eric Owens, Sondra Radvanovsky, Brian Asawa, Stephanie Blythe, Keith Phares, Lawrence Brownlee, James Valenti, Donovan Singletary, Jamie Barton, Michael Fabiano, Angela Meade, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Elliot Madore, Philippe Sly, Brandon Cedel and Heidi Grant Murphy.    

Low voices dominate Met Opera Regionals

Alaysha Fox, Anna Dugan, Joshua Arky, Katrina Galka, Sol Jin, Daniel Miroslaw and Theo Hoffman (L-R)

Two baritones and a bass walked away with the top prizes at the Metropolitan Opera Eastern Regional Finals this week. First place winners who are moving on to the semi-finals are bass Daniel Miroslaw, baritone Sol Jin and baritone Theo Hoffman (a regular feature on this site!). Second place went to soprano Katrina Galka, while bass Joshua Arky walked away with the Rohatyn Great Promise Award. Encouragement Awards were presented to sopranos Alaysha Fox and Anna Dugan.

The regional semi-finals will be held on March 6 from noon-5 PM followed by the Grand Finals on March 13 from 3-6 PM. The Grand Finals will be open to the public and tickets will be available online once they are made available.

Theo Hoffman sings "Dormo ancora" from Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria: 

Joshua Arky will perform in Beethoven's 9th Symphony on April 16th with the Binghampton Symphony and the Sargeant in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance with Opera Louisiane on May 14 & 15.

This season, Theo Hoffman made his debut with Atlanta Opera as Schaunard in Puccini's La bohème and is returning to the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2017 where he previously covered Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. This season he will sing Papagano at Juilliard from April 19-23.

Daniel Mirosław is joining the Oper Frankfurt’s ensemble for their upcoming season. 

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.

Michael Adams takes top honors at Met regional

Michael Adams at a Barihunks lunch in Ft. Worth (left)

Barihunk Michael Adams took top honors at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Gulf Coast regional finals held in New Orleans. The 24-year-old Texas native wowed the judges with performances of Tomsky's aria from Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame and Schaunard's aria from Puccini's La bohème.

Adams is a second year Resident Artist at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, where he has performed Taddeo in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, Lescaut in Massenet's Manon, Germont/Marquis and Verdi's La traviata, Count Tomsky in Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame and Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte. Last year, he won First Place in the Mario Lanza Institute Scholarship Competition.

Adams went to school at Texas Christian University (TCU), where he originally was pursuing a career in baseball. A torn Achilles tendon led him to pursue a career in singing. 

Adams wasn't the only baritone who fared well in the Big Easy, as Leroy Davis took Second Place and Ricardo Rivera shared Third Place with tenor Casey Candebat. 

Properly introducing Brian Mextorf; Competing in Met SE Regional Finals

Brian Mextorf

We briefly introduced Brian Mextorf back in September 2013, when he was workshopping composer Clint Borzoni's Antinuous and Hadrian with Operamission in New York City. He recently was named a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (North Carolina District), so we thought this was a good time to properly reintroduce him to readers.

Mextrof hails from Williamsport, Pennsylvania and studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (B.M.) and the Westminster Choir College (M.M.). This season he'll be an Emerging Artist with Virginia Opera for the 2014-15 season. In 2012, he was a member of the Gerdine Young Artist with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis where he performed three roles in the North American premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland.

A favorite of Operamission, in addition to Borzoni's work, he has appeared as Lesbo in their production of Handel’s Agrippina and Edward Ficklin’s Flash of Recognition. He sang Judas in the Philadelphia Orchestra's performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin in a cast that included fellow barihunks Luca Pisaroni and Andrew Foster-Williams.

Christian Zaremba and Alexander Elliott to compete in Met Semi-Finals

He will also be making his debut at Opera Saratoga as Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas. His Dido will be Jennifer Johnson Cano and the performance will be led by the brilliant conductor Nicole Paiement. Performances run from July 6-21 and tickets are available online.

Mextorft will compete in the Metropolitan Opera's Southeast Regional Finals on February 15, 2015. We'll be watching those closely, as a number of other singers who have appeared on this site will be competing in the regionals, including Vasil Garvanliev, Robert Balonek, Ricardo Rivera, Cairan Ryan, Alexander Elliott, Colin Ramsey, Steven Eddy, Christian Zaremba, Andrew Lovato and Chris Carr.       

Also competing are a number of singers who we've not featured yet, but will profile this week. They include Jonathan Harris, Phillip Gay, Andrew Bogard, Zachary Read, Brian Vu, Ben Taylor, Nathan Milholin, Christopher Besch and Christian Pursell.