Add Quirijn de Lang to the list of barihunks who have made their mark in the title role of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet, which includes Thomas Weinhappel, Thomas Oliemans, Franco Pomponi, Stéphane Degout, Edward Nelson, Régis Mengus, Bo Skovhus, Simon Keenlyside and Liam Bonner.
You can watch the Dutch baritone's performance on OperaVision on September 13th. The broadcast will start at 7 PM CET/1 PM EST/10 AM PST.
The performance is with OPERA2DAY in Den Haag, a company founded to bring opera to new audiences by presenting old standards in contemporary settings. The opera has been reduced to 2 hours from the standard 3 1/2 running time by eliminating the ballet and streamlining the story, including
an ending that combines the two existing versions of the opera.
The cast also includes Lucie Chartin as Ophélie, fellow barihunk Martijn Sanders as
Claudius, Martina Prins as Gertrude, Jan Willem Schaafsma as Laërte and
Patrick Pranger as Horatio. The opera is a co-production with the New
European Ensemble.
If you want to see de Lang live, he can be seen in Kurt Weill's Street Scene with Opera North from January through March in Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester and Nottingham. He will also be singing the Count in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro with the company during the same period.
Tim Murray preparing for his Merola Grand Finale (right)
Wisconsin-born barihunk Tim Murray will perform in the Grand Finale concert at the prestigious Merola Opera Program in San Francisco tonight. He'll be performing the Act III mother-son duet from Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet with Alice Chung. He also recently performed the role of Paul with Merola in the world premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s new opera If I Were You.
The concert is the final event in the Merola Opera Program's intensive summer training program for some of the world's most promising operatic talent. Tickets for the August 17th concert are available online.
In March, Murray made his debut with the Arizona Opera as William Dale in Kevin Puts’ Silent Night. He has already appeared three times with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City where he was part of their Resident Artist Program, performing Marullo in Verdi's Rigoletto, Guy in Talbot's Everest and the Captain in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.
Harve Presnell, Edward Laurenson and Thomas Hampson
Also appearing tonight will be New Zealand born baritone Edward Laurenson, who we introduced to readers back in 2014 and featured again when he took off for the Guildhall School of Music and again when he first came to San Francisco to study.
A number of the world's greatest baritones have come through Merola, including Broadway legend and film star Harve Presnell (1957), Thomas Hampson (1980), Mark Delavan (1985), David Malis (1982, 83), John Del Carlo (1977), Lucas Meachem (2003), Allan Monk (1966), Burak Bilgili (2001), John Chest (2009), Richard Paul Fink (1983, 84), Ao Li (2010), Daniel Okulitch (2002), John Relyea (1995), Philippe Sly (2011) and Hadleigh Adams (2012).
OPERA2DAY in Den Haag in the Netherlands will present barihunk Quirijn de Lang as the title character in Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet. The innovative company has reduced the 3 1/2 hour opera to just over 2 hours, by eliminating the ballet and streamlining the story, including an ending that combines the two existing versions of the opera.
The cast also includes Lucie Chartin as Ophélie, Martijn Sanders as Claudius, Martina Prins as Gertrude, Jan Willem Schaafsma as Laërte and Patrick Pranger as Horatio. The opera is a co-production with the New European Ensemble. The opera will be performed in 20 different venues throughout the region between January 17th and April 11th. Tickets and locations are available online.
OPERA2DAY was founded to bring opera to new audiences by presenting old standards in contemporary settings.
Thomas Weinhappel from Boy's Choir to Barihunks Calendar model
Austrian barihunk Thomas Weinhappel is a new and welcome addition to our Barihunks calendar for 2018 (and he's also featured in our new Barihunks photo book). He provided us some stunning photos shot with a horse, which appear in the calendar and book.
Thomas Weinhappel feature on Austrian television:
He was also recently featured on Austrian television, tracing his career from the Vienna Boy's Choir to winning a prestigious European opera award for his portrayal in the title role of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet in Ostrava. The Thalia Award goes to the"Best Opera Singer" for a performance at a Czech opera company. Judges praised him for "...finding the detailed
meanings of words and music, and their allusions to express the complexity
of the character the young man crushed by dark family relations."
He is currently performing as the Prince in Paul Lincke's Frau Luna at the Niederösterreich Operettenfestival, which runs through October 29th. He returns to the role of Hamlet in Ostrava on November 4th.
Thomas Weinhappel and Sam Roberts-Smith from the Barihunks calendar
Our 2018 Barihunks Calendar, which includes 20 of opera's sexiest men is now available for purchaseHERE.
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 thatHERE. The New Year is approaching faster than you think!
Barihunk Eddie Nelson will perform at the historic Bernard Maybeck Studio in a special fundraiser for the West Edge Opera. He'll be joined by accompanist Ronny Michael Greenberg, both of whom have close associations with the San Francisco, having participated in the Merola Opera Program and the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow Program.
The performance will be Sunday, May 21st at 3 p.m. with light refreshments, champagne and wine being served. The concert will include music by Duparc mélodies and excerpts from Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet, in which Nelson will sing the title role at West Edge Opera's Summer Festival.
The historic Maybeck Studio for the Performing Arts was built in 1914
by Bernard Maybeck, the architect of San Francisco's iconic Palace of
Fine Arts. Joseph R. Nixon commissioned the building as a live-in studio for his daughter Milda’s piano teacher, Alma Schmidt Kennedy.
The studio boasts beautiful acoustics and a long history of hosting
world-class performances and recordings. Performances have been hosted
there for over 100 years. The house includes two of Maybeck's favorite
architectual devices, the Gothic tracery "S" patterns along the balcony
and the Japanese-like split eaves on the gables.
Admission to this event is available with a donation of $175 per person, of which $145 is tax deductible. Click HERE to reserve a seat.
Malte Roesner, who appears with the West Edge Summer Festival
In addition to Edward Nelson's Hamlet, the West Edge Opera Summer season will also include the U.S. debut of German bass-barihunk Malte Roesner in Soler's The Chastity Tree. This is Spanish composer Vicente Martín y Soler's most famous work and is also known by its original title L'arbore di Diana.
Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte created a story from a legend that tells the tale of how Diana, the
Greek god of chastity, falls in love with the shepherd Endymion. The
plot —halfway between pastoral literature and erotic comedy also praises
the political openness of the Archduke Joseph II of Austria.
Tickets and additional information on the West Edge Opera Summer Festival are available online. Roesner is also scheduled to sing a concert of music by Soler and his contemporaries featuring soprano Aurora Perry and tenor Samuel Levine. Details will be announced shortly.
South African barihunk Jacques Imbrailo will perform at a gala for Stefano Guidi, the partner of New Zealand soprano Anna Leese. Guidi was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, an aggressive form of motor neurone disease, and given two years to live. He found out about his diagnoisis last April, just days after the birth of their son Matteo.
The 42-year-old Guidi is an Italian wine-maker recently moved to New Zealand to create a new life and build a family with Anna Leese.
Spanish tenor José Carreras and English baritone Sir Thomas Allen are leading the appeal to raise funds for the family, which aims to raise £25,000.
Bass Sion Goronwy, baritones Phillip Rhodes and Philip Smith will also perform, along with Sophie Bevan, Sarah Castle, Alisdair Hogarth, Madeleine Pierard, David Butt Philip and Wendy Dawn Thompson.
Imbrailo will be singing Horatio in Brett Dean's new version of Hamlet this summer at Glyndebourne. from June 11-July 6 with Allan Clayton as Hamlet and barihunk Rod Gilfry as Claudius. Tickets are available online.
Thomas Weinhappel in a Barihunk t-shirt and with his Thalia Award
Austrian barihunk Thomas Weinhappel became the first Austrian to win the Thalia Award for his portrayal of the title role in Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet at the National Opera of Ostrava. Weinhappel won in the category "Best Opera Singer" for a performance at a Czech opera company in 2016.
Judges praised him for "...finding the detailed
meanings of words and music, and their allusions to express the complexity
of the character the young man crushed by dark family relations."
The Thalia Awards are presented by the Czech Actors' Association and are named after the muse of comedy. Awards are given out for theater, opera, musicals and ballet. Past winners have included Eva Urbanová, Dagmar Pecková and Kate Aldrich. The award ceremony was broadcast live on Czech television and radio from the Czech National State Opera.
Thomas Weinhappel and Lukáš Bařák in The Rape of Lucretia
He can be seen as Tarquinius with fellow barihunk Lukáš Bařák as Junius in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia through April 19th in Ostrava. Tickets and additional performance information is available online.
Austrian barihunk Thomas Weinhappel was nominated for a Thalia Award for his portrayal of the title role in Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet at the National Opera of Ostrava. Weinhappel was nominated in the category "Best Opera Singer" for a performance at a Czech opera company in 2016.
The Thalia Awards are presented by the Czech Actors' Association and are named after the muse of comedy. Awards are given out for theater, opera, musicals and ballet. Past winners have inlcuded Eva Urbanová, Dagmar Pecková and Kate Aldrich.
The award ceremony will be broadcast on Czech television and radio from the Czech National State Opera on March 25.
Thomas Weinhappel as Joseph Calicot in Madame Pompadour
He also took some pictures for us in his Barihunk tee shirt during rehearsals for Britten's The Rape of Lucretia at the National Opera of Ostrava. He will be performing the role of Tarquinius with fellow barihunk Lukas Barak as Junius. Performances run from February 16-April 19. During March, he'll also be singing the role of Joseph Calicot in Leo Fall's Madame Pompadour in Baden.
We figured that since it's Thanksgiving (in the U.S.), and most people are sitting down for a big sumptuous feast, that it was a great opportunity to look at some of the best scenes in opera involving food. Giuseppe Verdi was known for using food as a plot device in many of his operas, which makes sense as eating and drinking is such a key part of everyday life and certainly can help define a character.
A number of operas and operettas feature drinking songs as part of their plot, including Bizet's Carmen, Berliozs La Damnation de Faust, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Verdi's La traviata, Smetena's The Bartered Bride, Verdi's Otello, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, Rombergs The Student Prince and, of course, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus.
Here are look at some of our favorite operas features food and drink (and it's by no means an exhaustive list!)
The performance that inspired Barihunks: Mariusz Kwiecien in SF Opera's Don Giovanni
The creation of the Barihunks blog was inspired after seeing Mariusz Kwiecien shirtless on a dinner table at the San Francisco Opera in Mozart's Don Giovanni. The cast also included fellow barihunk Luca Pisaroni as Masetto and hunkentenor Charles Castronovo as Don Ottavio. A true FEAST for the eyes. Don Giovanni appears to have an appetite for everything sumptuous and tasty in life: wine, women and food. Leporello even gets in the action, as he pours out a fine Marzemino wine from northern Italy for Don Giovanni, then nibbles at a piece of pheasant ("Versa il vino! Eccellente Marzimino!").
In Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring thechildren sing with glee in Act 2 about the May Day feast: "Jelly!...Pink blancmange!...Seedy cake! Seedy cake! (with icing on)...Treacle tart!... Sausagey rolls!...Trifle in a great big bowl!...Chicken and ham!...Cheesy straws!...Marzipan!" Asked to make a speech, Albert is tongue-tied and becomes an object of pity at the feast in his honor, but after draining his lemonade glass (satirically underlined with a Tristan chord, alluding to the love potion in that opera) and having a fit of hiccups he manages a few "hip-hip, hurrahs."
Simon Keenlyside sings Hamlet's Drinking Song:
In Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet the title character sings the famous drinking song Ò vin dissipe la tristesse. In the scene, Hamlet meets up with a troupe of actors who will perform a play for the court. With them, he sings a drinking song in which he calls for wine and laughter to dispel his sadness.
One of the most famous drinking songs is Esacamillo's Votre toast from Bizet's Carmen. In the scene, the toréador enters a tavern and sings an ode to bullfighting, the roaring crowds and the glory that comes with victory.
In Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore the townspeople turn out for a prenuptial feast in anticipation of Adina and Belcore's wedding. In the scene, Dulcamara, who is selling the love elixir (which is actually wine) sings, “Weddings are all very nice. But what I like best about them is the pleasant sight of the banquet.”
Is there a more lavish and musically satisfying scene involving food and drink that Act 2 of Puccini’s La bohème set in the Cafe Momus in Paris? In the scene, Schaunard calls for Rhine wine, roast venison, custard and dressed lobster for his fellow Bohemians at the Café Momus. The scene is rich with Parisian street food: oranges, dates, hot chestnuts, nougat, whipped cream, candies, fruit tarts, coconut milk, carrots, trout and plums from Tours.
In Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel the title characters almost become the feast,
as the witch tries to fatten them up to become the meal itself.
James Maddelena as Richard Nixon
In more modern times, the most famous dinner scene is probably at the end of Act 1 of John Adams' Nixon in China. In the scene, President Nixon sings, “The world watches and listens, we must seize the hour” as he toasts his host Prime Minister Chou En-Lai before a banquet. According to the Nixon Foundationm the official menu included “spongy bamboo shoots and egg-white consommé, shark’s fin in three shreds, fried and stewed prawns, mushrooms and mustard green and steamed chicken with coconut, almond junket, pastries, fruits.”
As mentioned early, no composer featured food and drink more prominently than Giuseppe Verdi. Few people have never heard the famous duet with chorus Libiamone' lieti calici from La traviata. The lively song in Act 1 encourages the drinking of wine or other alcoholic beverages, which make "kisses warmer."
One can hardly think of food without thinking of Falstaff, who is one of the great operatic eaters and drinkers. His bill at the Garter Inn, as he recounts at the opera’s opening, is for 6 chickens, 3 turkeys, 2 pheasants, 1 anchovy and 30 bottles of sherry.
Thomas Hampson and Paoletta Marrocu in the banquet scene in Macbeth:
In Act 2 of Macbeth, Verdi calls for a “sumptuously prepared feast” for the banquet scene in which Banquo’s ghost appears to the title character. Lady Macbeth sings a drinking song before this dramatic moment, in which she encourages the guests to drink as much as possible. Not a bad idea considering what happens next!
In Verdi’s lesser known early opera Un giorno di regno, the composer uses appetite as a dramatic device to create tension, as people await for a banquet that never takes place.
Enjoy a FEAST FOR THE EYES with your very own 2017 BARIHUNKS IN BED calendar. Now on sale!!
Thomas Weinhappel is back in Ostrava in the Czech Republic singing the title role in Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet on April 16, May 10 and 17, and June 2 and 15. Performances are at the Antonín Dvořák Theatre and tickets are available online.
In between performances of Hamlet, Weinhappel heads to the Opéra Massy in Paris to sing Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
on March 31, and April 1,2 and 3, which then plays at the Théâtre
Montansier in Versailles on April 5, at the Théâtre Alain Joneman in Le
Vésinet on April 6 and at the Théâtre Alexandre Dumas in Saint Germain
on April 8. He'll return to Ostrava in the Fall for more performances of
Hamlet.
Thomas Weinhappel as Hamlet
Thomas Oliemans as Hamlet
Barihunk Thomas Oliemans is also performing the role at the Göteborgs Opera through May 21 with fellow barihunk Paul Whelan as Claudius. In this production, on different nights they will present the two alternate endings that Ambroise Thomas wrote. At the very first
performance in Paris the opera concluded with Hamlet being crowned King,
and Queen Gertrud entering a nunnery. For the premiere at Covent Garden
in England, Thomas composed a more Shakespearean ending in which Hamlet
takes his own life. Tickets are available online.
Weinappel and Oliemans join an illustrious group of baritones who have sung the title role in recent years, including Sherrill Milnes, Thomas Allen, Thomas Hampson, Bo Skovhus, Simon Keenlyside, Liam Bonner, Wes Mason, Franco Pomponi and Stéphane Degout.
Thomas Weinhappel sings Hamlet's Drinking Song:
When Ambroise Thomas chose Shakespeare’s Hamlet as the subject of his new opera, France had been under the spell of the English bard for many years, and Ophelia had inspired romantic artists. The librettists Carré and Barbier distilled a straightforward story from Shakespeare’s abundant characters and situations. Many Anglo-Saxon critics have dismissed the opera because the libretto is so far removed from the original, despite Thomas having created a musical masterpiece.
The opera is played out between the opposite poles of real and feigned madness, love and avenge. After the murder of his father, Hamlet opposes the marriage of his mother and his uncle, at the expense of his beloved and himself.
Austrian barihunk Thomas Weinhappel will sing music from Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet at a gala concert with the Ostrava Nationalorchester in the Czech Republic on September 6th. He will then debut the complete role in March and April next year at the Nationaltheater Ostrava, which is just a 3 hour drive from Vienna.
He joins an illustrious group of baritone who have sung the title role in recent years, including Sherrill Milnes, Thomas Allen, Thomas Hampson, Bo Skovhus, Simon Keenlyside, Liam Bonner, Wes Mason, and Franco Pomponi and Stéphane Degout (with their famous nude scenes).
Thomas Weinhappel sings "Her die Hand es muß ja sein" from Johann Strauß's Zigeunerbaron:
When Ambroise Thomas chose Shakespeare’s Hamlet as the subject of his new opera, France had been under the spell of the English bard for many years, and Ophelia had inspired romantic artists. The librettists Carré and Barbier distilled a straightforward story from Shakespeare’s abundant characters and situations. Many Anglo-Saxon critics have dismissed the opera because the libretto is so far removed from the original, despite Thomas having created a musical masterpiece.
The opera is played out between the opposite poles of real and feigned madness, love and avenge. After the murder of his father, Hamlet opposes the marriage of his mother and his uncle, at the expense of his beloved and himself
