Reader Submission Harry Thatcher is a British baritone based in London. He is a Betty Brenner Scholar at The Royal College of Music. He is currently performing at the Grange Park Opera, where he is singing Bello in Puccini's La Facciulla del West and the Flemish Deputy in Verdi's Don Carlo. On June 7th, he'll also be giving a recital at the The Royal College of Music, performing music by Rossini, Schubert, Britten and Bolcom.
On the concert platform Harry has performed with the likes of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra of Opera North in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and the Birmingham Symphony Hall. He has sung the bass solos in Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation and various Bach Cantatas.
Operatic roles for The Royal College of Music International Opera School include the High Priest in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Florian in Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida and Frank in Johann Strauss' Die Flederamaus . Harry has covered the role of Death in Holst's Savitri for British Youth Opera
On December 12th, the Palm Beach Opera will present their annual Opera@The Waterfront at the Meyer Amphitheater. The free concert on the Intracoastal Waterway is a chance to hear arias and ensembles performed by a combination of international opera singers and the Palm Beach Opera Young Artists, orchestra and chorus.
One of this year's featured stars is barihunk Michael Chioldi, who will sing "Si può?..." from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, "Io morro ma lieto in core" from Verdi's Don Carlo, "This nearly was mine" from South Pacific and the famous quartet from Verdi's Rigoletto. Next season, Chioldi will sing Count di Luna in Verdi's Il trovatore with fellow barihunk Brandon Coleman, who is singing Ferrando.
He'll be joined by Jason Duika, who is a Palm Beach Opera Young Artist and is featured in the 2016 Barihunks Charity Calendar. He'll be singing "Ò vin, dissipe la tristesse" from Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet and the Ice Cream Sextet from Kurt Weill's Street Scene. This season with Palm Beach Opera he'll perform Dancairo in Bizet's Carmen and Dr. Malatesta in the family performance of Don Pasquale.
Joining them will be bass-barihunk Andrew Bogart, who is celebrating a birthday today and who is also a Palm Beach Opera Young Artist this season. He will be sing "La calunnia" from Rossini's Barber of Seville, the trio "O suave il vento" from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and "Signorina in tanta fretta" from Donizetti's Don Pasquale. This season with Palm Beach Opera, he will sing Lakai/Truffaldino in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and a family performance as the title character in Don Pasquale.
Enjoy Jason Duika and 17 more of the world's hottest opera singers in this year's Barihunk Charity Calendar. Order before the holiday rush!!!
A reader spotted David Pershall making his role debut as Rodrigo in Verdi's Don Carlo at Oper Burg Gars in Vienna and asked if we'd featured him before. Although we briefly mentioned him winning the Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition, we had actually never featured him before despite having seen him perform scenes from Don Pasquale, Les pêcheurs de perles, and Die Fledermaus in San Francisco.
He is a graduate of the Merola Opera program at San Francisco Opera and the
Virginia Opera Resident Artist program. He holds a Bachelor of Music
from Baylor University, as well as a Master of Music and an Artist
Diploma from Yale School of Music. In addition to winning the Jensen
Competition, he has won the the Marcello Giordani Foundation International Vocal
Competition, the New Jersey Verismo Competition, the
Gerda Lissner Foundation International Vocal Competition,
the Connecticut Opera Guild Competition, the Hugo Kauder
Competition for Voice, the Presser Music Foundation Award, and the
Thomas Stewart Award for Vocal Excellence.
Pershall joined the Vienna State Opera this season where his performances include Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Belcore in L’elisir d’amore, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, and Sebastian in The Tempest. He has perviously appeared at Sarasota Opera as Count di Luna in ll Trovatore, Vero Beach Opera as Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana, Virginia Opera as Papageno in The Magic Flute, Amarillo Opera as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor which was broadcast on PBS, El Paso Opera as Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Virginia Opera as Zurga in Les pêcheurs de perles, and with the Norwegian National Opera as Schaunard in La Bohème.
He has partnered with the Beethoven Easter Festival and the Polish Radio Symphony
Orchestra to produce three live performance albums in
which he headlined as Don Pedro in Maria Padilla, Manfredo in L’Amore dei Tre Re, and Orestes in Iphigénie en Tauride.
Performances of Don Carlo run through August 8th and tickets and additional cast information is available online. Next season he will make his Metropolitan Opera debut in the title rôle of The Barber of Seville followed by performances of Schaunard in La Bohème and Lord Cecil in Maria Stuarda. He'll be rotating Figaro with fellow barihunk Elliot Madore. Peshall's castmates include Ginger Costa-Jackson as Rosina and Taylor Stayton as Count Almaviva. Visit the Metropolitan Opera's website for additional information.
Siberian barihunk returns to New York from his European tour to sing Rodrigo in Nicholas Hytner’s production of Verdi's Don Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera. He will be joined by the great Italian baritone Ferruccio Furlanetto as Philip II. The two men also sang together in the Met's Ernani and it's always a thrilling vocal display when they share the stage. and throughout Russia this winter, Dmitri Hvorostovsky returns to New York's this month to star as The cast also includes Ramón Vargas as Don Carlo, Barbara Frittoli as Elisabeth and Anna Smirnova as Eboli. For tickets and additional information and tickets visit the Met website.
As soon as Hvorostovsky wraps up Don Carlo he will head down the coast to the Nation's capital for a recital with the Washington Performing Arts Society on March 20th at the Kennedy Center. The program includes songs and arias by Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and others. He continues down the coast to Miami Beach for a slightly different program at the New World Center that includes Rachmaninov, Rossini, Wagner, Rubinstein and Verdi.
Italian barihunk Alberto Gazale is new to us and we spotted him in the cast of Verdi's Il Corsaro at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste. Since we're celebrating the 200th anniversary of Verdi's death, we were hoping to discover some new Verdi baritones this year. The final performance of Il Corsaro is on Saturday, January 19th.
Gazale graduated at the Conservatory of Verona and the
Accademia Lirica in Mantua, where he specialized in singing Verdi. In 1998, he made his operatic debut
in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera in Parma. He has performed at most of the major opera houses in Italy, as well as the Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Teatro Real in
Madrid and the Opernhaus in Zürich. His Verdi repertory includes Attila, La traviata, Il
trovatore, Don Carlo, I masnadieri, Luisa Miller, Un ballo in maschera, Aida, Rigoletto, Il Corsaro, Macbeth and Otello.
Alberto Gazale sings Rigoletto's "Cortigiani vil razza dannata":
Alberto Gazale sings "Per me giunto è il dì supremo" from Don Carlo:
Erwin Schrott, Sherill Milnes, Dmitri Hvorstovsky & Ildar Abrazakov (Dario Acosta Photography/Richard Tucker Music Foundation)
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation gala on November 11th turned into a veritable Barihunks Gala, with three of the hottest an most popular barihunks performing: Erwin Schrott, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Ildar Abrazakov. The three singers even joined their legendary predecessor Sherill Milnes for a photo op.
The "Three Barihunks" (I see a DVD in their future), were featured along with many of today’s biggest names in opera, including fellow baritones Gerald Finley and Quinn Kelsey, mezzo-sopranos Olga Borodina and Jamie Barton, tenors Marcello Giordani and Stephen Costello under the baton of maestro Patrick Summers and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The gala also honored soprano Ailyn Pérez, the 2012 Richard Tucker Award-winner.
The concert will be broadcast in the United States on December 13th as part of the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center series on PBS. The telecast will include a feature on Ailyn Pérez and performances by the featured guest singers.
The "Three Barihunks" will also be featured prominently on the Metropolitan Opera stage this season. Ildar Abdrazakov is singing the title roles in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni,
Dmitri Hvorostovsky stars in the new production of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera and later in its revival of Verdi's Don Carlo, and Erwin Schrott will sing Leporello to Abdrazakov’s Don Giovanni and Dulcamara in Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore opposite his real-life partner, Anna Netrebko.
Buy you Barihunks Charity Calendar today, so that you can mark December 13th as the date of the Richard Tucker gala telecast. Click below:
On October 16, Christopher Temporelli
performs at the Chamber Music Society in Pusan, Korea in a concert dubbed "Enchanting Low Voice, Christopher Temporelli." We couldn't agree more with the title.
If Korea is too far off the beaten path, he returns to
New York City on October 8th to perform at the 2012 Columbus Day Parade Gala and then
to perform live from the parade’s red carpet, singing Verdi's ‘O tu Palermo’ from Don Carlos, which will
be broadcast on ABC and international affiliates. This year, the Parade will be marching up Fifth Avenue from 44th to 72nd Street.
As we've mentioned previously, he makes his Michigan
Opera Theater debut in the role of Achille in Handel’'s Giulio Cesare on November 10th with David Daniels in the title role.Temporelli will be appearing in the 2013 Barihunks calendar, which is slated for release in early October.
Markus Beam
North Carolina appears to be more than a swing state in this year's Presidential election, it seems it's become a cultural hub. We've had a disproportionate amount of barihunks news coming out of the Tar Heal State, with the latest being a recital by Markus Beam.
On Sunday, October 7th, Beam will sing selections from opera, song and musical theater at the Cultural Center in Lincolnton, which is in the old First Baptist Church. It's being produced by the Lincoln County Concert Association and tickets are only $20. Lincolnton is less than an hour from Charlotte and we assure you that it will be well worth the drive. For additional information or tickets call (704) 732-9066 or email lincolntoncultural@bellsouth.net.
We had to run this item just for the headline and the fact that we can't think of any other reason to post Pope Benedict XVI. It's also probably the only time that a Pope will be featured in two consecutive posts, as our last post about Attila featured Sam Ramey playing Pope Leo I.
Pape will sing in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Daniel Barenboim at Milan’s La Scala, in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI on June 1st. The Pope's visit is part of the World Encounter of Families, which deals with issues relating to the family. The first Pope to attend a performance at La Scala was was Pope John Paul II, who enjoyed selections from Verdi operas in 1983 under Riccardo Muti.
Pope Leo I
After entertaining the Pope, Pape will don a crown and perhaps borrow the papal scepter to play King Philip II in in Verdi’s Don Carlos under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst at the Vienna State Opera. Performances run from June 16-29 and the cast also includes fellow barihunk Simon Keenlyside as Rodrigo. Visit the Vienna State Opera website for additional details.
We recently posted about the much anticipated concert in Heidelberg, Germany featuring Luca Pisaroni and Thomas Hampson. As regular readers will know, not only are these two men some of the most popular barihunks in the world, but they are a father-in-law/son-in-law tandem. They also happen to be two of the greatest singers in the world today.
Luca Pisaroni (L) & Thomas Hampson (R)
For those of you who missed the broadcast, here are the duets from the concerts. We've also added Luca Pisaroni singing "Sorgete... Duce di tanti eroi" from Rossini's Mamoetto II, which he will be singing at the Santa Fe Opera this summer. A performance that is not to be missed. You can watch the entire concert at teresa59's YouTube site.
Thomas Hampson, Luca Pisaroni - Il rival salvar... Suoni la tromba (I puritani)
Thomas Hampson, Luca Pisaroni - Restate (Don Carlo)
Thomas Hampson, Luca Pisaroni - Cheti, cheti immantinente (Don Pasquale)
Thomas Hampson, Luca Pisaroni - Uldino...Tardo per gl'anni (Attila)
Luca Pisaroni - Sorgete... Duce di tanti eroi (Mamoetto II)
We have celebrated national holidays for both Canada and the United States on this site. After all, the two countries have provided us with an endless stream of talented and sexy barihunks. One of our readers asked why we don't celebrate Lithuanian Statehood Day. Frankly, we didn't know about it, but we're happy to remind readers about the two Lithuanian singers who have appeared on this site, Kostas Smoriginas and Vytautas Juozapaitis.
For others who are unfamiliar with the holiday, Statehood Day is an annual public holiday in Lithuania celebrated on July 6th to commemorate the coronation of Mindaugas as the first and only King of Lithuania in 1253. The exact day of this event is disputable and was chosen according to the hypothesis of Edvardas Gudavičius, formulated in 1989. The day has officially been celebrated since 1991.
Vytautas Juozapaitis is popular on both television and the opera house in Lithuania. He is a former winner of the Lithuanian National Prize and performs regularly at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre and Kaunas State Musical Theatre. He is also a professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
Here is Vytautas Juozapaitis singing Rodrigo's death scene "Son Io, mio Carlo...Io morro, ma lieto in core" from Giuseppe Verdi's "Don Carlo.":
Kostas Smoriginas studied at the Lithuanian Music and Theater Academy from an early age. After moving to London in 2005 and representing his country in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, he spent two years at the Royal College of Music before joining the Jette Parker young artist programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, at the beginning of the 2007/08 Season. He is currently appearing in La Traviata at Aix-en-Provence. Click HERE for additional cast and performance information.
Here is Kostas Smoriginas singing "Denn Wir Haben Hie Keine Bleibende Statt" from Brahms' "Ein Deutsches Requiem":
We're in a Verdi mode this week and in our weekly poll Rodrigo in Don Carlo jumped out to an early lead as your favorite baritone role. We decided we'd start the week with the famous duet "Dio che nell'alma infondere" where Don Carlo and Rodrigo pledge themselves to the cause of liberty and an eternal friendship.
We recently ran a pole asking readers who they thought was the hottest Aussie barihunk. Laurence Meikle and Sam Roberts-Smith led the pack. Here are some videos for you to enjoy.
First is a profile of Meikle as he prepares to sing for Queen Elizbeth and a clip of him performing La Boheme in English at the Soho Theater in London.
Here is Sam Roberts-Smith performing "O Carlos, ascolta" from Verdi's Don Carlo and a profile on him where he discusses his career and future plans. The first video is from the 2009 Australian Singing Competition Finals Concert in Perth, Australia.
Nathan Gunn, Gunther Groissböck, Paulo Szot & Simon Keenlyside
If you're in the New York area and you love barihunks, you might want to buy tickets to the next five performances at The Met. On Monday, the Met opens with a new Don Carlo featuring Simon Keenlyside that was featured in the Sunday New York Times. The article is a must read for fans of The Met or Verdi.
Fans of Nathan Gunn will be able to see him as Gugliemo in "Cosi fan tutte" and Papageno in the "Magic Flute" over the next few weeks. Not had enough? Carmen will alternate Escamillo's with John Relyea and opera's new superstar stud Paulo Szot. If you missed the sizzling hot Gunther Groissböck in La Boheme there is no need to worry, as Peter Mattei is about to join the cast.
You can purchase tickets and check casts at the Metropolitan Opera website.
David Adam Moore in Soldier Songs
Due to time constraints, we missed informing readers about tonight's performance of Peter Lieberson's rarity "King Gesar" featuring barihunk David Adam Moore. Moore now heads to Seattle for a run of the Barber of Seville on January 16, 21, 23, and 28. The December cast will feature barihunk José Carbó as Figaro.
In anticipation of Dmitri Hvorostovsky's upcoming portrayal of Rigoletto, we thought that we'd provide you with a sampling of some of his sumptuous Verdi singing. Here are excerpts from Don Carlo, Forza and Otello. For all of you tenor fans who keep clamoring for parity, we've added one clip with hunkentenor Jonas Kaufmann. (We would like to take this time to remind readers that this site is dedicated to baritones, although we appreciate the outpouring of love for the higher voiced male singers).
The "Siberian Hunky" will be in London from October 11 through November 2 portraying the famous hunchback. Visit the Royal Opera House website for more information.
He then travels to Vienna from November 16-28 where he will perform at the famed Vienna State Opera.
You have to give the Cincinnati Opera some credit. First, their recent Le Nozze di Figaro featured Barihunks favorite Teddy Tahu Rhodes, then they follow it up with American mainstage debut of Mario Caria. Caria, by the way, also made his U.S. debut at the Cincinnati May Festival. Maybe it's Cincinnati's famous chili, but whatever is bringing the barihunks to this quaint river town, keep 'em coming!
The 32-year-old Sardinian has studied with famed soprano Mirella Freni and has won a series of prestigious vocal awards, including the audience prize at the 2007 Operalia competition. It's easy to see why he'd be an audience favorite, with his smoky Mediterranean good looks and perfect Verdian baritone.
