Bass-barihunk Markus Suihkonen and barihunk Boris Prýgl will be featured in the Bavarian State Opera's "Iolanta," which will be paired with Stravinsky's "Mavra." The opera is about a blind princess who doesn't not know that she is blind or that she is a princess. Her blindness is eventually cured by love.
Iolanta was Tchaikovsky's final opera and premiered on December 18, 1892. The libretto was written by his brother, Modest Tchaikovsky, who adapted the play “King Rene’s Daughter” by the Danish playwright Henrik Hertz. The opera was originally paired with The Nutcracker ballet and was actually better received initially than it's counterpart.
The best known piece from the opera is the love duet at the end of the opera, but the opera also features two arias for low male voices. King Renè's prayer and Robert's aria "Who can be compared with my Matilda?"
Igor Stravinsky's Mavra is a one-act comic opera and one of the earliest works of Stravinsky's neo-classical period. Boris Kochno's libretto is based on Alexander Pushkin's The Little House in Kolomna.
Performances of the double-bill run from March 15-28 and tickets are available online.
Gary Griffiths (photo from Oedipus Rex, Barbara Aumüller -left)
Welsh barihunk Gary Griffiths is making his Oper Frankfurt debut in a double bill of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, both of which deal with suppressed fears. He is singing Creon in Oedipus Rex and Robert in Iolanta. Fellow barihunk Brandon Cedel will perform the Messenger in Oedipus Rex.
Iolanta was Tchaikovsky's last opera and was first performed in 1892, the same year his Nutcracker ballet exploded onto the scene, keeps Iolanta's process of realization very focused on a musical level – in a one act work with a vivid, brightly colored, shimmering musical language.
Stravinsky and Jean Cocteau, on the other hand, fully intended to reach monumental heights in two acts. They created a mixture of music stereotypes and patterns: fateful, pulsating rhythms combine with harmonies, influences drawn from the Middle Ages, Russian orthodox church music and folk music, classic and jazz.
Griffiths was the winner of the Welsh Singers Competition in 2012 and a finalist representing Wales in the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where, in 2009, he won the Gold Medal Competition.
Performances run through November 25 and tickets are available online.
Jolyon Loy is a 26-year-old British baritone from Worcestershire, UK, who is new to this site.
Loy can be heard on December 3rd at the Austrian Cultural Forum with
Dame Felicity Lott as part of London Song Festival's Lieder Masterclass & Schubert Society Song Prize. Lott will be coaching
singers and the Schubert Society Song Prize will be awarded to the best
duo at the end. Winners will receive £500 and the offer of engagements
with the London Song Festival and the Schubert Society of Britain in
2017. Second place will be awarded £250 and third place will receive
£100. Additional information is available online.
On
December 10th and 16th, Loy can be heard in two Russian concerts with
Opera Coast called 'The Old Tales of Kitezh Grad', the first in Brighton
the second in Pushkin House in London. Singers will perform arias based
on Russian fairy tales and folklore from Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Rubinstein's The Demon. Tickets are available online.
He began singing at the age of nine as a chorister at Worcester
Cathedral, sang in numerous Three Choirs Festivals, performed for
Queen Elizabeth II in the year of her Golden Jubilee, regularly sang
as a soloist at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall with Birmingham City Choir
and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. At age 17, he joined the
Worcester Cathedral Choir as a choral
scholar and sang with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and in
2008 was awarded a Choral Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford
University.
He
was educated at The King's School, Worcester and the University of
Oxford and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2016.
In 2016, he joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus for Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, directed by David McVicar. He has also sung the role of Marquis d’Obigny in Verdi's La traviata for Opera Lyrica, Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute for Hampstead Garden Opera and excerpts from Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tiresias with Salon Opera.
At the Royal Academy of Music, he performed as Onegin in scenes from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, The Vicar in Britten's Albert Herring and Count Robinson in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto.
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