Barihunk John Chest to represent U.S. at Cardiff; 3 other barihunks competiting

John Chest

Barihunk John Chest, who is currently based at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, will represent the United States at the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in June. Other barihunks in the competition include bass Dominic Barberi representing England, bass Roberto Lorenzi representing Italy and calendar model Iurii Samoilov reprenting the Ukraine.

Dominic Barberi

The winner of the main prize will receive £15,000 and the Cardiff Trophy, while the Song Prize, awarded to the best singer of Lieder and art song, carries a £7,000 prize and trophy. The judges for the main competition this year are Cardiff Chairman David Pountney, mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry, soprano Sumi Jo, baritone Thomas Quasthoff and conductor Anu Tali.

Roberto Lorenzi

A number of operas most famous low voices were winners at Cardiff, most famously Dmitri Hvorostovsky who won the main prize in 1989 and Bryn Terfel who won the Song Prize that same year. Other winners have included Tommi Hakala who won the main prize in 2003, Christopher Maltman who won the Song Prize in 1997, Paul Whelan who won the Song Prize in 1993 and Jacques Imbrailo who won the coveted Audience Prize in 2007.

Iurii Samoilov

The Song Prize rounds will be broadcast in the BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert (June13 -16) with the song prize final live on Radio 3 In Concert (Friday, June 16) and on BBC Four presented by Petroc Trelawny and American soprano Angel Blue (Saturday, June 17).The four concerts at St David’s Hall, Cardiff will be broadcast on BBC Four (June13 - 16). The Grand Final will be broadcast live on both BBC Four and BBC Radio 3 on Sunday, June 18.

Nederlandse Reisopera's tall order producing "Der Kaiser von Atlantis"

Wiard Witholt rehearsing Der Kaiser von Atlantis

They only time that Wiard Witholt has appeared on Barihunks was in 2010 when we were trying to figure out who the tallest barihunk was in the world. The Cardiff Singer of the World Competition listed him at 6' 7½" which is a little over 2 meters tall, making him the second tallest after Olivier Laquerre (but the tallest to ever compete at Cardiff).

He's now performing the title role in Czech composer Viktor Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis at the Nederlandse Reisopera from May 4-13 in Amsterdam, Enschede, Apeldoorn, Maastricht and Leiden. The Netherlands Opera presented the world premiere of the opera December 16, 1975, at the Bellevue Centre in Amsterdam. The opera was performed at Theresienstadt on May 25, 1991, fifty-one years after the initial rehearsal.The opera has had numerous performances worldwide in recent years, including in Kassel, Long Beach, Hamburg, Linz, Boston, Lyon, Vienna, Dijon and a U.K. tour. Other upcoming performances will be in Madrid with Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester and in Vienna with Matteo Loi.

Wiard Witholt studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the New Opera Academy in Amsterdam, graduating in 2005. In 2008, he made his debut at the Royal Theatre La Monnaie Brussels as Le Berger in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. In the 2009-10 season, he became a full-time member of the Opera House in Dessau. He created Schemariah, the principal character in Hiob, Erich Zeisl's opera based on the novel by Joseph Roth. Last season he sang the Messanger in the world première of Pascal Dusapin's Penthesilea at the Royal Theatre La Monnaie and Dusapin's Passion at the Sydney Festival 2016.

Viktor Ullman and his librettist Peter Kien wrote Der Kaiser von Atlantis while interned at the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín) around 1943. The opera received a rehearsal at Theresienstadt in March 1944, but the Nazi authorities interpreted the work's depiction of the character Kaiser Overall as a satire on Adolf Hitler and did not allow a performance.

Both of Viktor Ullmann's parents were from families of Jewish descent, but had converted to Roman Catholicism before his birth. Ullmann remained active musically at Theresienstadt, where he was a piano accompanist, organized concerts, wrote critiques of musical events, and composed, as part of a cultural circle including Karel Ančerl, Rafael Schachter, Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, and other prominent musicians imprisoned there. Both the composer and the librettist died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Netherlands Opera presented the world premiere of the opera December 16, 1975, at the Bellevue Centre in Amsterdam. The opera was performed at Theresienstadt on May 25, 1991, fifty-one years after the initial rehearsal.

Amartuvshin Enkhbat wins Cardiff Audience Prize

Amartuvshin Enkhbat

Baritones took two of the three top prizes at the 2015 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, as Amartuvshin Enkhbat of Mongolia took the Audience Prize today. For the finals he performed "Si può? si può?" from Pagliacci, "O du mein holder Abendstern" from Tannhäuser and "Eri tu" from Un ballo in maschera. South Korean Jongmin Park already won the Song Prize yesterday.

The Top Prize went to soprano Nadine Koutcher of Belarus. For the finals she performed, "Ach, ich liebte" from Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Marfa's aria from The Tsar's Bride and Lakmè's Bell Song.

Jongmin Park wins Cardiff Song Prize

South Korean baritone Jongmin Park has won the first award handed out at the 2015 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, by taking home the Song Prize. The Song Prize winner receives £5,000.
Judging the Song Prize was chairman David Pountney, Julius Drake, John Gilhooly, Soile Isokoski and Claron McFadden.

He performed Schubert's Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt and Der Atlas, Schumann's Stille Tränen, Tosti's Ideale, Du-Nam Cho's Boat Song.

The competitors are now competing fothe Main Prize Final on Sunday at 7.30pm and its £15,000 prize.

Cardiff Singer of the World Competition features 6 low voices

Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Bryn Terfel

There is no shortage of great low male voices in this year's Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, as six baritones and basses are competing. The include Jongmin Park, Blaise Malaba, Sebastian Pilgrim, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Ryan Speedo Green and Insu Hwang. 

A number of operas most famous low voices were winners at Cardiff, most famously Dmitri Hvorostovsky who won the main prize in 1989 and Bryn Terfel who won the Song Prize that same year. Other winners have included Tommi Hakala who won the main prize in 2003, Christopher Maltman who won the Song Prize in 1997, Paul Whelan who won the Song Prize in 1993 and Jacques Imbrailo who won the coveted Audience Prize in 2007.
 
This year, fans around the world will have two ways to enjoy the competition, either on BBC radio or for a fee on Sonostream.tv, which will be the first international broadcast outside the U.K. The broadcasts of the first rounds on Sonostream are on 24-delay and are simultaneous with the BBC transmissions. The main competition final on Sunday, June 21 is LIVE. Broadcasts of the initial rounds begin on June 16 at 8:30PM CEST/3:30 PM EST/12:30 PM PST.
 
Over 300 young singers from around the world applied to participate in the current competition, but only twenty artists were selected to perform with the orchestra at St David’s Hall in Cardiff, Wales.

Parallel to the main competition, there is also the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Song Prize, in which singers perform art songs to piano accompaniment at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and St. David's Hall.  

Purchased programs  on Sonostream. tv will be available for 30 days on demand after the first broadcast date.

Jongmin Park

Jongmin Park studied at the Korea National University of Arts and at the Accademia del Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he worked with Mirella Freni and Renato Bruson. His roles at La Scala included Bartolo in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and the Doctor in Verdi's Macbeth.

Jongmin Park sings Rossini's La calunnia:

From 2010-13, he was a member of Hamburg State Opera where he performed Masetto in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Sparafucile  in Verdi's Rigoletto, the King of Egypt in Aida, and Truffaldino in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. He joined Vienna State Opera at the start of the 2013/14 season.  He won the Birgit Nilsson Prize at Operalia, first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition and second and Audience Prizes at the Neue Stimmen international singing competition.

Blaise Malaba

Blaise Malaba was born in Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is studying at the Faculty of International Relations and the Faculty of Culture and Arts at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. 

Blaise Malaba sings "Let my people go"

He started singing in the church choir as a soloist, then the student choir at my university and with the male choir of Lviv. Since January 2014,  he as been studying with Professor Bogdan Bazylykut. He enjoys singing Verdi and sacred songs.  

Sebastian Pilgrim

Sebastian Pilgrim was born in Herford in North Germany and studied in Detmold and Hannover with Sabine Ritterbusch and Alessandra Althoff-Pugliese. He won the Wolfgang Wagner Award for performances as Daland and Hagen at the 2012 International Competition for Wagner Voices. While still a student, he became a member of the Theater Erfurt, performing such repertoire as Tierbändiger and Athlet Lulu and Kaspar and Eremit Der Freischütz.  

He subsequently joined the ensemble at Nationaltheater Mannheim in 2013, singing leading roles such as Sarastro Die Zauberflöte, Fiesco Simone Boccanegra, King and Cook Love for Three Oranges and King Philip Don Carlo. He also composes and conducts and has given several premieres of new music.
You can listen to Sebastian Pilgrim's clarinet sonata HERE. 

Amartuvshin Enkhbat

Amartuvshin Enkhbat was born in Sukhbaatar and studied at the State University of Arts and Culture, Ulan Bator. He won second prize and the audience prize at the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition; shared first prize in Operalia 2012 and second prize and two special prizes at the International Singing Contest Francisco Viñas in 2013. He is a principal Soloist of the State Academic Opera House of Mongolia where he has performed Escamillo and Morales in Carmen, Tonio in Pagliacci, Amonasro in Aida, Count di Luna in Il trovatore, Iago in Otello, Renato in Un ballo in maschera; and numerous other roles.

Ryan Speedo Green

Virginia native Ryan Speedo Green studied at Florida State University and the Hartt School of Music. He made his Metropolitan Opera stage debut in the 2012/13 season as the Mandarin in Puccini's Turandot, and the Second Knight in Wagner's Parsifal  He was a National Grand Finals winner of the 2011 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

Ryan Speedo Green sings This Nearly Was Mine from South Pacific:

In 2014, he received a George London Foundation Award, first prize in the Opera Index Competition, an Annenberg grant, first prize in the Gerda Lissner Foundation competition and both the Richard and Sara Tucker Grants from the Richard Tucker Foundation.  Operatic highlights include the Commendatore in Mozart's Don Giovanni with The Juilliard School, Colline in Puccini's La bohème with Central City Opera and Don Magnifico in Rossini's La Cenerentola with Opera Colorado.  In 2014, he joined the Wiener Staatsoper ensemble, where he has performed Sparafucile, Basilio, and the King in Aida. 

Insu Hwang

Insu Hwang was born in Seoul, South Korea and studied at Yonsei University, then in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik, Karlsruhe. He reached the finals of the 2011 Queen Elizabeth competition and in 2013 won third prize and the Mozart special prize at the Veronica Dunne International singing competition, and 2nd prize at the Gut Immling international singing competition.  He is currently a member of the Young Artist program at the Landestheater Detmold, where he has performed the roles of Montano Otello, First Nazarene Salome and Sarastro Die Zauberflöte.  

Other competitors in this year's BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition include soprano Nadine Koutcher, mezzo Marina Pinchuk, soprano Aviva Fortunata, soprano Anaïs Constans, tenor Nico Darmanin, mezzo Ingeborg Gillebo, soprano Kelebogile Besong, tenor Jaeyoon Jung, soprano Regula Mühlemann, tenor Ilker Arcayurek, tenor Oleksiy Palchykov, soprano Lauren Michelle and soprano Céline Forrest. 
 

Reader Submission: Şzymon Komasa

Polish Barihunk Şzymon Komasa

Our latest reader submission is Şzymon Komasa, who took part in a master class at Julliard on October 4th with Joyce DiDonato. He caught the attention of our reader during the live online webstream of the master class. Renee Fleming and Eric Owens will be featured in upcoming master classes, so check the school's online schedule.

Şzymon Komasa was born in Poznań and studied at the Academy of Music in Łódź, from which he
graduated with honors in 2009 in both cello and vocal studies. Komasa comes from a very artistic family. His mother Gina was a singer, his father Wieslaw is a famous Polish actor, his brother Jan is a director, his sister Mary is a lead singer of a band and his youngest sister Sophie is a stylist. Jan Komasa directed him in Sala samobójców (Suicide Room), which was also written by his brother. 

He studied opera at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London before becoming a student of Edith Wiens at Juilliard’s Artist Diploma program in Opera Studies.. In 2011, he represented Poland in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, but fell ill and had to withdraw before the finals. 

Şzymon Komasa

He has won awards in international singing competitions, including the Best Wagner Singer at the 7th Annual Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition in Dublin in January of this year. He previously took third prize at the Ada Sari Vocal Art Competition in Nowy Sącz in Poland, first prize at the Puccini International Singing Competition in Verona and first prize at the Halina Halska-Fijałkowska Vocal Competition in Wrocław. 

Şzymon's opera performances include Slook in Rossini's La cambiale di matrimonio, Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, all at Teatr Wielki in Łódź, and Schaunard in Puccini's La bohème at Teatro Filharmonico in Verona. His repertoire also includes Mityukha Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.  This summer, he sang Albert in Halevy's La Juive in Dresden.

You can watch him HERE during an appearance on a Polish morning TV show.