Pisaroni as Radamisto in Santa Fe (Photo by Ken Howard)
The tour of Handel's Radamisto starring barihunk Luca Pisaroni, Patricia Bardon, Elizabeth Watts and countertenor heartthrob David Daniels under the baton of Harry Bicket is kicking off this week. It opens on February 6th at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, then heads to Birmingham, England on February 8th, London's Barbican on February 10th and then jumps across the Pond to Ann Arbor, Michigan on February 17th and New York's Carnegie Hall on February 24th.
Barihunk Ryan McKinny sings Tiridate's aria "On the wings of my ambition":
Pisaroni will reprise the role of the antagonist Tiridate, which he sang to rave reviews at the Santa Fe Opera in 2008. Radamisto was the first
of Handel's operas written for the Royal Academy of Music. It combines sex and politics in a subtle
musical portrayal of human relations that ultimately champions the
power of personal and marital loyalty.
Simon Keenlyside (Photographed by Johannes Ifkovits)
OPERA NEWS has announced the honorees for the 2012 OPERA NEWS Awards, paying tribute to five superb artists who have made an invaluable contribution to the art form: baritone Simon Keenlyside, sopranos Mirella Freni and Dawn Upshaw, countertenor David Daniels, and bass-baritone Eric Owens.
The eighth annual OPERA NEWS Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, April 21 at The Plaza in New York City. All the winners — and a host of the city’s cultural, civic, and social luminaries — will be present at the gala awards dinner, which will feature celebrity presenters speaking about the awardees and introducing video performance clips.
The official announcement of this year’s honorees appears in the September 2012 issue of OPERA NEWS, which was released on August 6 with tenor Piotr Beczala on the cover.
Simon Keenleyside (Prospero) and Christopher Lemmings (Caliban) in a scene from Act 1 of
'The Tempest' recorded at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden:
For the third consecutive season, the OPERA NEWS Awards will include a special sweepstakes that will give a lucky winner round-trip air transportation for two to New York, provided by American Airlines, as well as a two-night stay at Trump International Hotel and Tower and VIP tickets to the OPERA NEWS Awards. No purchase is necessary to enter the sweepstakes; details are available at www.operanews.com/onawards and in the September issue.
“Simon Keenlyside seems incapable of making a false move onstage," said Features Editor Brian Kellow, "Not only does he have one of the most expressive baritone voices I've ever heard, he always seems to be completely in the moment dramatically. His work is never flashy, but it has an inner fire that few performers can match.”
Keenlyside opens at The Met on October 23 in Thomas Ades' "The Tempest." Click HERE to read our post or HERE to purchase tickets.
We like the recent trend of Barihunks adorning the covers of major music magazines. Following Mariusz Kwiecien's appearance on the cover of Opera News and Christopher Maltman's appearance on Opera Now, we now have Luca Pisaroni as the latest coverboy. The Italian barihunk, who is appearing in the Met's "The Enchanted Island" through January 30th is on the cover of the January 2012 issue of Classical Singer magazine.
Here is the interview: Many singers view their career as a sprint to the finish line. Discordant with instrumentalists who can pick up the violin at age 3 and make their Lincoln Center debuts before they’re 10, and even fellow crooners in other genres who can go platinum before they’re able to legally drive a car, classical vocalists face a variety of developmental hurdles before the real work can begin.
Traditional training today leaves singers taking an average of one voice lesson a week and often being catapulted into roles—either by agents or opera companies—at preternaturally early ages, ages often included in (if not headlining) marketing copy. What follows is an inevitable, and often very public, burnout.
Bucking this trend, however, is bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni. Born in 1975, Pisaroni is just beginning his rise to prominence in the United States. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut at 29 as Publio in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, but gave a star turn in New York as Leporello in the company’s new production of Don Giovanni (and returns this month as Caliban in the world premiere of The Enchanted Island). Compared to many of his peers who have headlined multiple Met productions and sweep across Europe, it may seem to some as a delayed trajectory—but for Pisaroni it’s not the majority of a sprint, but rather the first few miles of the marathon.
“It takes a life to master your voice, and it takes really only a few bad repertoire choices to ruin your voice. And once it’s gone, it’s gone,” explains the Venezuelan-born Italian singer over ginger ale at a hotel lounge that faces the Met. Growing up in Busseto, a comune in Parma and the birthplace of Giuseppe Verdi, Pisaroni developed an early passion for opera, admitting that he cannot remember his life without the art form. He listened obsessively to Boris Christoff singing the Verdi canon, from Don Carlos’ “Ella giammai m’amo” to Simon Boccanegra’s “Il lacerato spirito” to selections from the cabaletta-rich Attila. A few years later, at age 11, he saw his first opera—Aida. Around the same time, he destroyed a cassette tape of Pavarotti, singing over his recording of Tosca trademark “E lucevan le stelle” in tandem with the star tenor and checking to make sure his notes were high and long enough. [Continue reading HERE]
After his run at the Met, Pisaroni sticks to baroque music, as he rejoins cast member David Daniels in at the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Argante in Handel's Rinaldo. Performances run from February 29-March 24. Click HERE for additional cast and performance information.
The Metropolitan Opera is premiering the baroque pastiche "The Enchanted Island" tonight and it will run for a month. The music is taken from a number of 18th century masters, including Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others. The original libretto which is drawn from Shakespeare was written by the British writer/director Jeremy Sams. Additional performance information and tickets are available HERE.
As much as we're intrigued by the opera and impressed by the amazing cast that they've assembled led my Joyce di Donato and David Daniels, we were fascinated by the transformation of barihunk Luca Pisaroni into the less-than-attractive character Caliban.
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