Robin Adams in first German production of Eötvös' Angels in America

Robin Adams as Prior Walter in Angels in America

British barihunk Robin Adams is the latest singer to portray the role of Prior Walter in Péter Eötvös' operatic adaptation of Angels in America. The show opened on March 10th at the Theater Freiburg and runs through June 3rd. This is the first performance of the opera in Germany.

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.  

Robin Adams as Prior Walter in Angels in America

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. Barihunk Andrew Garland sang Prior Walter at the New York City Opera last year to great acclaim, in a cast that included Michael Weyandt as Joe.

Additional cast information and tickets are available online.

Barihunk trio in NY premiere of operatic Angels in America

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.

Michael Weyandt in New York premiere of Péter Eötvös’ "Angels in America"

Michael Weyandt

Barihunk Michael Weyandt is joinging the cast of Péter Eötvös’ opera adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Angels in America with the New York City Opera. Weyandt will be singing the role of the closeted gay Mormon Joe Pitt in what will be the New York premiere of the opera. He joins fellow barihunk Andrew Garland, who is singing the crucial role of Prior Walter.

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.

Andrew Garland

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.

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.

Oddly, and distressingly, the New York City Opera did not post cast lists!

Operatic Angels in America premieres in Poland

Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk and David Adam Moore

Barihunks David Adam Moore and Craig Verm created a sensation in 2008 at the Fort Worth Opera in Péter Eötvös' Angels in America as Prior Walter and Joe Pitt respectively. David Adam Moore is back singing the piece with Opera Wrocławsa with Maurice Lenard as Joe Pitt. Moore has also performed the piece with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra to great acclaim. This is the opera's first production in Poland.

The opera will be back in the U.S. from February 19-22 at the Boston University Theatre with a different cast.

Tenor Gyula Rab and baritones David Adam Moore and Maurice Lenhard

Lenhard, a native of Gelnhausen, Germany,  is new to this site. He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik and the Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main. He originally studied piano and was good enough to take top prizes at the Gründauer Kultursommers and the Willy-Bissing Klavierwettbewerbs Hanau competitions. Like Moore, he is a proponent of contemporary music and performed in the 2013 premiere of the chamber opera Out at SEA with the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation and the Ulysses Network in Budapest.

You can catch Moore again in the United States at the Utah Opera in March when he takes on Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

Guillaume Andrieux appearing in Eötvös opera

Guillaume Andrieux in Philip Glass' Les Enfants Terribles

French barihunk Guillaume Andrieux, who we introduced to readers in a performance of Benoît Mernier’s La Dispute, will perform Roger in Peter Eötvös' opera Le Balcon from May 20-24 at the Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris.

Le Balcon, Peter Eötvös' second opera, is based on Jean Genet’s play of the same name. He is best known in the United States for his opera Angels in America, which starred barihunk Thomas Meglioranza in New York and David Adam Moore in Fort Worth and Los Angeles.

Albane Carrère & Guillaume Andrieux

The composer wrote of the piece, "With Genet, one can take it literally; a revolution rages in the streets, the Palais Royal is blown up, while the customers in the specially equipped salons of the brothel 'Le Balcon' are dressed with the properties and costumes of major social positions: They want to become a bishop, judge, general, even if for only half an hour. The girls help them, and Madame collects the money for this dubious pleasure. The piece is a wonderful, constantly sparkling role play, a theatre within the theatre...My music sometimes 'is also dressed' with 'French-style manners,' but most important to me was to let the marvelously frivolous, poetic language of Genet remain understandable. I therefore used many grotesque, comedy-like cabaret-music elements, and sometimes my music is close to the French chanson, with Fréhel, Jacques Brel, Yves Montand, Leo Ferré being my models."

In December, Andrieux can be seen as Raoul de Gardefeu in Offenbach's La Vie parisienne at Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg.

David Adam Moore featured in The Examiner

David Adam Moore from the 2012 Barihunks calendar (photo Moses Jones)

Barihunk David Adam Moore received an extensive feature in the Southeast Texas issue of The Examiner, which you can read below.

Moore can next be heard on January 15th with the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing Prior Walter in Eötvös' "Angels in America."The all-star cast also includes Brian Asawa, Measha Brueggergosman and Julia Migenes. Tickets are available online. In February and March, he'll be featured as Stanley Kowalski in Andre Previn's Streetcar Named Desire with Virginia Opera. On April 5th, he'll be featured in the same role with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

The musical journey of Southeast Texas native  

David Adam Moore

From youth, people struggle to find their place in the world. They long to find their path, the road that leads them to the future. Students strive to decide what direction they want their lives to take. Once decided, obstacles in the path can cause people to choose to fork and leave completely the path they thought they wanted to follow, changing the course of their futures. Vidor native David Adam Moore faced obstacles and veered onto a path that would ultimately lead him to be a highly sought after operatic baritone.

The life of a performer, a life spent traveling, city to city, country to country, across continents, is a difficult yet rewarding one, according to Moore. He was raised in Vidor, born into a family with a musical background.

“I started making music from childhood because my family are all country and western musicians going back like five or six generations,” Moore said. “I think my grandfather, John Shirley Moore, actually had his own radio show as a teenager and started playing professionally locally in the nightclub scene from the time he was a teenager. My dad, John ‘Bubba’ Moore started working the nightclub scene in Southeast Texas when he was 13. Most of my aunts and uncles and my cousins play music…Most of them are nightclub musicians but some have played on the national level. My dad toured with Tracy Byrd for 15 years or so. So, I was around people making music.”

David Adam Moore pays homage to Leonard Bernstein

Moore said his interest was in electronic music, which had gained popularity at the time. He listened to bands like The Cure, The Smiths and Depeche Mode. He worked with synthesizers and learned about the technical side of music. He also started listening to classical music on KVLU while in high school. Moore said, at that time, he planned to go to college to study theology and possibly linguistics. A talent show at Vidor High School lead him to become a member of the choir, altering his course though he did not know it at the time. [Continue reading HERE]

Barihunks On The Air - David Adam Moore & Randal Turner

One of the great things about most of our barihunks is that they are not only lovely to look at, but there are a number who are highly compelling artists. David Adam Moore and Randal Turner are not only two of the most riveting performers on stage, but they are also amazing singers. You can now hear both of them online in their most recent performances.

Moore has shown his ability to bring great depth to music ranging from the baroque to today's most modern compositions. Great examples of this are his critically acclaimed performances as Aeneas in Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" and his riveting performance of David T. Little's "Soldier Songs."

[David Adam Moore in Soldier Songs]


Moore just reprised the lead role of Prior Walter in Peter Eötvös' "Angels in America" to great critical acclaim at the Barbican Center in London with the BBC Symphony. The Sunday Times of London raved about the U.K. premiere of the opera. You can haer it on the BBC until April 14th by clicking HERE. Due to "adult language" there is a box that you'll have to click to attest that you're over the age of eighteen. Although the opera contains a lot of recitative, Eötvös has created a condensed and highly effective opera based on Tony Kushner's award-winning play.

[Randal Turner as Don Giovanni]


Randal Turner is known for his warm, mellifluous baritone as well as his ease on stage. Trained as a dancer, he brings great physicality to all of his roles. The early buzz on his Don Giovanni in Detroit is that it's going to be a sexually charged performance. For those who can't make the performance, they will still have the opportunity to hear it broadcast live on April 14th on Detroit's WRCJ 90.9. The internet stream will be available HERE at 7:30 PM EST.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subscribe to Barihunks by Email

Contact us at barihunks@gmail.com

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Craig Verm Showers on Stage

Here are some hot pictures of Craig Verm performing Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath at the Pittsburgh Opera. It's nice to see the occasional shower scene in opera, especially when there are barihunks involved. I'm still waiting for an updated version of Billy Budd to the 1970s where all of the sailors are in short-shorts and no shirts. (Any German directors listening? Feel free to steal the idea).

Barihunks readers might remember Craig Verm as the guy who created a sensation playing Joseph Pitt in Peter Eötvös’ Angels in America at Fort Worth Opera. You can refresh your memory here: http://barihunks.blogspot.com/search?q=craig+verm. He shared the stage with the equally hot David Adam Moore, who is featured in the previous post.

Verm, who performs regularly in Pittsburgh, is next scheduled to sing the beautiful Faure Requiem with the Pittsburgh Concert Chorale on March 7 & 8, 2009. You can get more information here: http://www.pghconcertchorale.org/.

Also, don't forget to vote in our "Hottest Barihunk" poll to the right. I promise that Craig Verm will be in the next poll. Also, in response to a bunch of emails, Daniel Okulitch will also be in the next poll.

This site can be contacted at barihunks@gmail.com

Subscribe to Barihunks by Email
_________________________________________________________________

It's Hot in Ft. Worth

If you live in Dallas, you may want to hop on Interstate 30 and head over to Ft. Worth where they are burning up the stage with some Barihunks favorites. The top photo is of Craig Verm who appeared on this site in August (http://barihunks.blogspot.com/search?q=verm). The next photo is of one of my personal favorites, David Adam Moore, who I've had a tough time finding barihunky photos of for this site. Luckily, we now have this photo from the Ft. Worth Opera's production of Peter Eotvos’ “Angels in America,” which attests to why we'd like to see more, more, more...

The Ft. Worth Opera has also announced that it will perform one of our favorite operas at this site, Dead Man Walking, with one of our most popular barihunks, Daniel Okulitch. If you haven't checked out his hot Canadian, we have plenty of photos (http://barihunks.blogspot.com/search?q=okulitch). For more information on Dead Man Walking, visit their website at www.fwopera.org. This should be a great night in the theater.

Once again, if you have photos that you'd like to share, please send them to barihunks@gmail.com.