Hunky Pin-Up Guys in Young Vic's HMS Pinafore

CJ Hartung, Joshua Hughes, Jeffrey Williams, John Kaneklides, and with flag (L-R)

Who says that Gilbert & Sullivan can't be sexy? The Young Victorian Theatre Company has assembled a cast of three barihunks and a hunkentenor for their current run of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. The pin-up worthy cast includes barihunk Joshua Hughes as Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, First Lord of the Admiralty; barihunk Jeffrey Williams as Captain Corcoran, Commander of the HMS Pinafore; hunkentenor John Kaneklides as Ralph Rackstraw; and, bass-barihunk Christopher "CJ" Hartung as Dick Deadeye.

The show has already proved to be a huge box office success, as Saturday's opening night performance and today's matinee both completely sold out. Fortunately for anyone near the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area, there are three remaining performances on July 20, 22, and 23 at the Sinex Theater in the Roland Park area.

Joshua Hughes, graduated with a Master of Music in Voice Performance from the Peabody Conservatory, and previously appeared in the company's 2016 summer production of Iolanthe. He recently performed in Charpentier's Les Arts Florissants and Purcell's The Fairy Queen with Dallas Bach Society.

Jeffrey Williams and cast

Jeffrey Williams, who won the Middle/East Tennessee District of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, will be appearing next season with the Nashville Opera in both Puccini's Tosca and Hercules vs Vampires. He is also an Assistant Professor of Voice at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.

CJ Hartung is a student at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and is a regular young artist with the Berk's Opera Company, where he most recently sang the role of Lodovico in Verdi's Otello.

John Kaneklides has been singing both opera and musical theater, having performed Henrik in Sondheim's A Little Night Music and Tony in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. This season he made his role debut in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann with the St. Petersburg Opera, where he performed the title role.

Tickets for the remaining shows are available online.

Jeff Williams to sing Pirate King in Baltimore

Jeff Williams (right & left center) and Spencer Adamson (far left & far right)

We finally got Jeff Williams to model his Barihunk t-shirt in anticipation of his upcoming performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance at the Young Victorian Theatre Company in Baltimore.  Williams, who is singing the Pirate King grabbed some photos with castmate Spencer Adamson, who is singing Samuel.  The show opens Saturday July 11th and if you use the promo code July11 for opening night, you'll receive 30% off of your tickets.

You can watch Jeff Williams singing the Pirate King Song ("I am a pirate king") on Baltimore's CBS affiliate WJZ.

The Young Victorian Theatre Company has been producing shows in Baltimore for 45years and it's the city's longest-running summer musical theater. They are dedicated to performing the works of Gilbert & Sullivan and they attract some of best in young musical talent from across the country.

Jeff Williams is a former Nashville Opera Mary Ragland Young Artist and a Seagle Music Colony Young Artist. He has also been associated with the John Duffy Composers Institute and Virginia Arts Festival in Norfolk, Virginia for many years premiering operatic works of living operatic composers. Williams appears on Albany Records in Thomas Sleeper's series of operas, Einstein's Inconsistency, and Michael Dellaira's The Death of Webern to be released later this year. Upcoming engagements include the premiere of George Mabry's Voices, the Mandarin in Turandot with Nashville Opera, performances of Evan Mack's Angel of the Amazon and Roscoe, the premiere of Jeffrey Wood's Different Bodies with the Gateway Chamber Orchestra, and Brahms: Biography in Music with LyricFest.

Jeff Williams as the Pirate King (left) and in recital

Spencer Adamson hold a Bachelor's degree in Voice Performance from Westminster Choir College, with graduate work at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has performed the roles of Tonio in Pagliacci and Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana with HUB Opera Ensemble in Hagerstown, Maryland. performs in outreach programs with Baltimore Lyric Opera bringing opera to Baltimore's elementary schools.

Additional performances are on July 12, 16, 18 and 19. Tickets and additional cast information is available online.

Baritone Brigade in Baltimore Gondoliers

 

Jeffrey Williams (left);  Jeffrey Williams, Andrew Pardini and Alexis Tantau (right)

Barihunk Jeffrey Williams, who we introduced to readers in December 2012, will be singing the role of Don Alhambra in the Young Victorian Theatre Company's production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers. He's joined in the cast by a number of luscious low voices, including Spencer Adamson as Antonio [see photo below], Andrew Adelsberger as Duke of Plaza Toro, Timothy Kjer as Giorgio and Andrew Pardini as Giuseppe Palmieri.

Performances are on Saturday, July 12, Sunday, July 13, Saturday, July 19 and Sunday, July 20 at the  Sinex Theater in Baltimore. Tickets and additional cast information are available online.

Spencer Adamson and the cast of Gondoliers

The Gondoliers, or, The King of Barataria, was the twelfth opera written together by Gilbert and Sullivan. Opening on December 7, 1889 at the Savoy Theatre, The Gondoliers ran for 554 performances, and was the last of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas that would achieve wide popularity.

The story of the opera concerns the young bride of the heir to the throne of Barataria who arrives in Venice to join her husband. It turns out, however, that he cannot be identified, since he was entrusted to the care of a drunken gondolier who mixed up the prince with his own son. To complicate matters, the King of Barataria has just been killed. The two young gondoliers must now jointly rule the kingdom until the nurse of the prince can be brought in to determine which of them is the rightful king. Moreover, when the young queen arrives to claim her husband, she finds that the two gondoliers have both recently married local girls. A last complicating factor is that she, herself, is in love with another man.