Nathan Gunn (left) and Aaron Blake/Joseph Lattanzi (right)
One of the board members of the PROTOTYPE Festival in New York put together this video of Nathan Gunn, who was singing Papageno at the Met. It shows what might of happened had he used the dating app Tinder to find his Papagena.
Nathan Gunn has a number of recitals on his 2018 calendar, including his cabaret show with his wife Julie Gunn. You can catch performances on January 18th in Thomasville, Georgia; at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, CA on January 22nd; and, at the Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills on March 15th. The concert includes works by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, Billy Joel and Leonard Bernstein.
On January 12, 13 and 14, PROTOTYPE will present Gregory Spear's opera Fellow Travelers at the Lynch Theater at John Jay College, with barihunk Joseph Lattanzi and hunkentenor Aaron Blake in the lead roles. Tickets are available online. Fellow Travelers, which was written in collaboration with librettist Greg Pierce and director Kevin Newbury, was developed in a 2013 Opera Fusion workshop. Lattanzi sang both the workshops for the opera, as well as the world premiere at the Cincinnati Opera and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Wayne Tigges, Aaron Blake, Andrew Garland and Michael Weyandt(l-r)
The new New York City Opera closes its season with the New York Premiere of Péter Eötvös's Angels in America, distilling the two-night, seven-hour play into a single, powerful evening of opera. The cast includes the barihunk trio of Andrew Garland as Prior Walter, Michael Weyandt as Joe, Wayne Tigges as Roy Cohn and hunkentenor Aaron Blake as Louis. The opera comes with a warning of "strong sexual content, nudity, mature themes and language."
The opera was originally written for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris
where it premiered in 2004. The cast included barihunks Daniel Belcher
and Omar Ebrahim, as well as Barbara Hendricks, Roberta Alexander, Derek
Lee Ragin and and Topi Lehtipuu.
Angels in America received its West Coast premiere in 2013 at the
Walt Disney Concert Hall with barihunk David Adam Moore and Nikolas
Nackley as Joe. Moore has also sung the role at the Fort Worth Opera Festival and the Opera Wrocławsa in Poland.
The opera is based on Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the
same name and will be sung in English with supertitles. There will be
four performances running from June 10-16 and additional cast information and tickets are available online.
Jospeh Lattanzi in his Barihunk t-shirt at the Seattle Opera (left) and at a Merola Opera performance (right)
Gregory Spears' new opera, Fellow Travelers, will receive a piano-vocal showcase at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on March 20th at 4 PM. This is the composer's first full-length opera, which follows Paul's Case and O Columbia. Paul's Case was a huge success at the 2014 Prototype Festival and subsequently at the Pittsburgh Opera. The opera was originally developed by American Opera Projects. O Columbia was presented last year by the Houston Grand Opera and featured barihunk Ben Edquist.
Fellow Travelers, which was written in collaboration with librettist Greg Pierce and director Kevin Newbury, was developed in a 2013 Opera Fusion workshop. It will feature former Barihunks calendar model Joseph Lattanzi, who will sing both the showcase and the world premiere.
Performances of Fellow Travelers will run at the Cincinnati Opera
from June 17-July 10 at the Jarson-Kaplan Theater. In addition to
Lattanzi, it will feature hunkentenor Aaron Blake, Mary Johnson,
Alexandra Schoeny and Talya Lieberman. Tickets and additional
information is available online.
Joseph Lattanzi performs "Our Very Own Home" from Fellow Travelers:
Fellow Travelers, set in Washington against the backdrop of the McCarthy-era "lavender scare," tells the story of Timothy “Skippy” Laughlin, an aspiring young journalist, and Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller, a handsome, profligate State Department official. A chance encounter with Hawk leads to Tim's first job in DC, and his first love affair. As his involvement deepens, Tim struggles to reconcile his political convictions, his religious beliefs, and his love for Fuller – an entanglement that will end in a stunning act of betrayal. The libretto is based on the novel by American novelist, essayist and critic Thomas Mallon.
On February 27th, Lattanzi will sing the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Arizona Opera with fellow barihunk Ryan Kuster as Masetto and the talented Matthew Burns as his sidekick Leporello. Barihunk Morgan Smith will sing the other performances of Don Giovanni. Additional cast and ticket information is available online.
David Adam Moore & Aaron Blake (left) in Cosí fan tutte*; Moore in Dead Man Walking (center)
American barihunk David Adam Moore is as sexy in evening wear as he is in briefs, which is when we last saw him as Joseph de Rocher in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking.
Moore opened last night at the Utah Opera as Guglielmo opposite hunkentenor Aaron Blake in their production of Mozart's Cosí fan tutte, which is updated to 1920s Naples, Italy. The entire cast is bedecked in Great Gatsy-like costume complete with spats.
Will Crutchfield leads a cast that also includes Matthew Burns as Don Alfonso, Karin Wolverton as Fiordiligi, Leah Wool as Dorabella and Abigail Levis as Despina. Performances run through March 22nd and tickets are available online.
*(Cosi photos by Rick Egan of The Salt Lake Tribune)
