Peter Brathwaite, who has regularly appeared in our Barihunks Charity Calendar, is reprising his performance as Christus in a performance of Bach's St John Passion for Ensemble Arden in Varberg, Sweden. He sang the role last April with the Wren Players as the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital in London. Tickets to the March 29th performance are available online.
Brathwaite was one of our Reader Submissions in 2011 and we've watched his career flourish. He recorded and toured with the ensemble Amore! and debuted the role of Mimoun in the world première of Emily Howard’s Zátopek.
Peter studied at the Royal College of Music as well as in Belgium and is the recipient of a major award from the Peter Moore’s Foundation and Independent Opera at Sadler's Wells. He has been performing in opera mainly in Belgium, France, Italy and the United Kingdom and appears regularly in recital and on the concert platform.
Barihunk calendar model and recording artist Peter Brathwaite recently opened in Emily Howard's chamber opera "Zatopek!, " which premiered in Liverpool on June 15. With London hosting the 2012 Olympics, Howard decided to write an opera about the legendary Czech long-distance runner Emile Zatopek who won the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Brathwaite sings the roles of Mimoun and Father.
Zatopkek! is Howard's first operatic work and it recreates the event where the runner obliterated the competition and became a household name overnight.
You can hear the 12-minute performance and a discussion with composer Emily Howard on the BBC3. It begins around the 56:00 mark. Brathwaite, Ensemble 10:10 and members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Youth Choir will reprise the work on July 15 at the Southbank Centre in London. Admission is free, but tickets must be reserved online.
Brathwaite also records with the group Amore on the Warner Brothers label. You can read our post about it HERE.
We recently received an email asking us if we'd ever heard of the English baritone Omar Ebrahim, who were told was one of the first male opera singers to appear nude on stage. Amazingly, he was completely unfamiliar to us, despite an impressive discography and successful career in opera. You can see the uncensored version of the picture HERE. Of course now he's very familiar to us.
WARNING: NSFW below this point
Ebrahim was a regular with a small, innovative company in London called the Opera Factory in the late 80's and early 90's. According to our source, they often featured nudity in their productions. Many of their performances were recorded and broadcast in the UK on Channel 4, but they have not yet been released on DVD. Ebrahim also starred in a TV adaptation of Marschner's "The Vampyr" in 1992, in which he pioneered the nude baritone shower scene.
With Opera Factory he also performed a version of Ligeti's Aventures, in which Ebrahim and two sopranos all appeared nude. Ligeti said of the piece, "Something happens, but I do not know what it is, and you do not know what it is."
Omar Ebrahim in Ligeti's Aventures
These screenshots are from Ligeti's "Nouvelles Aventures," which you can watch below.
Ebrahim studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at the Royal Shakespeare Company, before joining the Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1980. Although he developed a reputation for performing contemporary operas, he was a noted Don Giovanni, and performed in Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolante, Bizet's Carmen and Puccini's La boheme. Ebrahim currently teaches, but has sung opera premiere’s by Kris Defoort for La Monnaie Brussels, Liza Lim for Elision Ensemble and Eotvos at the Chatelet Theatre Paris. He has also sung with New Israeli Opera, Scottish Opera and Opera Theatre Company Dublin.
Ebrahim is on recordings of Philip Glass' "The Penal Colony," the vocal work of György Ligeti, Michael Tippett's "Omar and the Angel," Michael Nyman's "Facing Goya," "Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett - Words and Music," Enno Poppe's "Interzone," Chris Dench's "An Hypallage" Simon Holt's "Raju Raghuvanshi is a Ghost" and Harrison Birtwistle's "Gawain," in which fellow barihunk François Le Roux appeared nude. He also appears in the video of Michael Tippett's "King Priam," which is available on VHS, but not DVD.
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If you want to enjoy sexy singers all year, make sure to purchase our 2012 Barihunks charity calendar. Click HERE to order today. All proceeds will support young artist programs.
British barihunk Leigh Melrose has never received the attention that he deserves on this site. We featured a video of him singing a selection from Britten's "Billy Budd" at the end of a feature on Alexander Tsymbalyuk. He certainly can't be ignored anymore, as Melrose has landed a key role at English National Opera in Mieczysław Weinberg’s 1968 opera The Passenger.
The opera was banned in the Soviet Union and was first premiered last year at the Bregenz Festival. Weinberg, a Soviet composer of Jewish-Polish heritage who died in 1996, never saw a performance of this lost masterpiece in his lifetime.
The opera revolves around an encounter between two women – one a former Auschwitz guard and the other a former prisoner. Melrose plays Tadeusz, a camp inmate and violinist who defies the Commandant byordered by performing some meloncholy music by Bach rather than a frolicking waltz. Needless to say, things don't end well for Tadeusz.
We continue to find the performances at ENO as some of the most innovative and interesting in all of opera right now. We loved Nic Muhly's "Two Boys" and look forward to seeing The Passenger. The opera runs from September 19-October 25. Additional cast and performance information is available HERE. If you're looking for more traditional operatic fare, ENO will be performing the highly acclaimed Jonathan Miller production of Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love" at the same time.
You can read an entire feature on Leigh Melrose and The Passenger in the Islington Tribune by clicking HERE.
The last time we featured English barihunk Robin Adams on the site, he was performing a shirtless Eugene Onegin in Bern, Switzerland. Adam's Onegin stalked Tatiana around the stage like a crazed sexual predator. His performance was critically acclaimed and added a thrilling element to the opera, which is usually conservatively costumed and staged.
Robin Adams shirtless as Giovanni
It appears that opergoers in the Swiss capital are in luck again, as Adams is shedding his threads for the new production of Don Giovanni at the Stadt Theatre Bern which opens on Thursday, February 24. The opera company, which sits in the large shadow that is cast by the opera in Zurich two hours down the road, always manages to put on an interesting show. They were also smart enough to use the sexy singer in their marketing materials, which caught the attention of one of our Zurich-based readers.
For additional cast and performance information, visit the Stadt Theatre Bern website.
[Dorothea Roeschmann as Donna Elvira and Erwin Schrott as Leporello]
Two of our favorite barihunks, Christopher Maltman and Erwin Schrott, are joining forces as Don Giovanni and Leporello respectivley. This somewhat controversial production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is returning to the 2010 Salzburg Festival and opens on August 9th.
Astute readers of this site may recall our post of the two singers together in this production from 2008.
Christopher Maltman talks like he sings. His voice is rich and deep, his articulation clear, and the lilt of his tone imparts a musicality to every phrase. Opera is clearly in his blood.
We meet backstage at the Royal Opera House to discuss his latest role, the Forester in The Cunning Little Vixen. It’s his first Janáček and a typically adventurous foray into the less well-know corners of the 20th century repertoire. There are plenty of challenges here that you won’t find in Mozart. ‘It’s tough musically’ he tells me ‘one of those pieces that seems to exist on the edge of falling apart, but when it does come together it is great. We are just about there now, which is timely as the dress rehearsal is tomorrow.’ [Continued HERE]
You can watch the animated trailer for opera HERE. The production runs from March 22 through April 1 and tickets can be purchased HERE.
[Pictures of Robin Adams in Bern's "Eugene Onegin"]
A few people have recently brought English baritone Robin Adams to our attention. We can't ignore him anymore with his super-sexy performance of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" in Bern, Switzerland. Adams spends a good deal of the opera barechested and barefoot and stalking Tatiana like a sexual predator.
Back in January 2009, we declared Mariusz Kwiecien and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as the hottest Onegin's, but Adams may give them both a run for their money. He certainly brings the same raw sexuality to the role as Kwiecien. It's also nice to see directors injecting a little heat into Onegin rather than having it performed like a Jane Austen novel. This production is also decidedly heterosexual, unlike the Brokeback Onegin that played in Munich. As wonderful as that gimmick was, it was only going to work once.
The Swiss culture site www.Art-tv.ch has a great video highlight of the opera. See the video HERE.
Here are some additional images of Robin Adams for your enjoyment:
Barihunk Simon Keenlyside is featured in the new issue of Opera News and the article includes lots of photos. If you don't get Opera News, they are offering a special that includes a CD with arias.
We have always maintained that Matthew Worth is the sexiest Tarquinius in the world today, but Christopher Maltman offers up quite a challenge in this performance from the Aldeburgh Festival. He also sings this music as beautifully as we've heard. Here's a clip from what may be the most glorious five minutes of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia.
