No Barihunks on CBC's list of "30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians," so we added two

The CBC recently ran a feature called "30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30." They surveyed Canada's conservatories, music competitions and professional training programs to come up with their list. Although we at Barihunks take the word "HOT" to mean sexy, it appears that they are going for a double meaning, with "HOT" also meaning "musicians with talent to keep an eye on."

This year they didn't manage to come up with a single barihunk, despite having included them in past years, including Philippe Sly and Gordon Bintner. So we decided to add two to the list.

Micah Schroeder

Canadian-American baritone Micah Schroeder will be appearing as Harlekin in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos with the Highlands Opera Studio in Haliburton, Ontario on August 24 an 26. He is a 2018 graduate of the Vancouver Opera Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist Program and an alumni of the Aspen Opera Centre, as well as The Banff Centre of Arts and Creativity. He recently completed a Diploma in Operatic Performance from the University of Toronto and holds a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music in Opera from the University of British Columbia.

Dimitri Katotakis

Toronto native Dimitri Katotakis studied at McGill University and Juilliard, before being accepted into the prestigious Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. Last year, he was part of Steven Blier's New York Festival of Song concert "Protest." He was the Second Prize winner at the Canadian Opera Company's vocal competition.

Gordon Bintner leads (almost) all-male cast of "From the House of the Dead"

Gordon Bintner (left and right), Gal Fefferman and Brandon Cedel (Photo: Barbara Aumüller)

Oper Frankfurt is presenting Leoš Janáček's From the House of the Dead from April 1-29 with a cast led by Canadian barihunk Gordon Bintner and an array of barihunks familiar to readers of this site, including Barnaby Rea, Mikołaj Trąbka and Brandon Cedel. Bintner portrays the main character, Alexandr Petrovič Gorjančikov, a well-born political prisoner who is dismayed by his new surroundings in a Siberian prison camp.

Leoš Janáček completed his revolutionary opera From the House of the Dead in May 1928, which became his final and, arguably, most powerful work. 
  
The work was first performed posthumously in 1930 and is based on Dostoyevsky’s semi-autobiographical novel describing life in a Siberian gulag. Janáček does not soften that harsh reality at the heart of his tale, but imbues the work with compassion in its honest depiction of humanity’s difficult truths. 

Barnaby  Rea, Mikołaj Trąbka and Brandon Cedel

He used a radically new music language to convey the epic demands of the work. The astonishing score includes eruptive elements, piercing dissonances, laconic, short motifs, rhythmical ostinati and language as "instant photography of the soul," as the composer called it. He also uses folk music, which often embued his works, to show how the prisoners create a sense of community even in bleak surroundings.

The brief appearance of a prostitute is the only female figure in a world of men whose movement is governed by constant monotonous repetition and whose symbolic expression is found in a wounded eagle. 

The piece was initially deemed by some to be too pessimistic, but the opera eerily foresaw the totalitarian era that was on the horizon and has new-found resonance in today's geo-politcal world.

Tickets and additional cast information is available online. 

Douglas Williams stars in Mascagni's Iris at Bardscape

Douglas Williams and Talise Trevigne in Iris

Bass-barihunk Douglas Williams portrays the villainous Kyoto in Mascagni's opera Iris with Bard Summerscape at the Fisher Center. He's joined by soprano Talise Trevigne as the vulnerable Iris, Matt Boehler (who has appeared on this site) as Il Cieco and tenor Gerard Schneider as the fickle Osaka.

Williams has previously collaborated with Iris director James Darrah on Agrippina for Opera Omaha, which we wrote about in 2014 for having the "Hottest Cast in Opera." He has also worked with Darrah on Jonathan Dove’s monodrama, The Other Euridice for Bay Chamber Concerts. On August 21, he'll perform Escamillo with the director at the Rockport Opera House in the Bizet/Brooks version of La tragédie de Carmen.

Composed by Puccini’s friend Pietro Mascagni, who composed the better known opera Cavalleria rusticana, Iris debuted in Rome in 1898, ushering in a wave of fin-de-siècle exotic opera. Mascagni’s dreamlike score provides the backdrop for Luigi Illica’s haunting libretto recounting the tragic story of Iris, an innocent young girl tricked into abandoning her elderly blind father and lured to a brothel in Tokyo’s notorious red-light district.

Remaining performances on July 27, 29 and 31. Tickets are available online.

On August 25, Williams will sing Scarlatti's La Gloria di Primavera with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and conductor Nicholas McGegan at Tanglewood. On September 17 and 18, he makes his Mozart debut as Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro with the Milwaukee Symphony and conductor Edo de Waart. He'll be joined by fellow barihunk Gordon Bintner as Count Almaviva. Tickets are available online.

Backstage photo from "No Tenors Allowed" featuring "Three Barihunks"

Gordon Bintner, Elliot Madore, Bill Eddins (Edmonton Symphony Orchestra Music Director), Philippe Sly

Regular readers may remember our post about the three Canadian barihunks performing the "No Tenors Allowed" concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The trio joined conductor Bill Eddins for a program of from music from Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's Macbeth, Rossini's Barber of Seville, and Wagner's Tannhäuser.

We were fortunate enough to get a backstage photo of the group after Monday night's concert, which from all accounts, was a huge success. 

Philippe Sly can next be heard on April 2nd with soprano Hélène Guilmette performing excerpts from the Fauré Requiem, Handel's Messiah and Haydn's Creation with the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec under the baton of Jean-Marie Zeitouni. Tickets are available online.

Elliot Madore returns to Pennsylvania where he will again be part of a barihunk trio in Mozart's Don Giovanni with Opera Philadelphia. He'll take on the title role, as Wes Mason sings Masetto and Nicholas Masters sings the Commendatore. Performance run from April 25-May 4. Tickets are available online.

All-star "Three Barihunks" concert coming to Edmonton

Philippe Sly, Elliot Madore & Gordon Bintner (L-R)

We can't begin to tell you how often we're contacted because someone wants to put on a "Three Barihunks" concert, yet they never seem to come to fruition. It looks like the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Edmonton Opera are going to beat everyone to the punch and they're appropriating the name "No Tenors Allowed" from the 1999 concerts and recording by Thomas Hampson and Samuel Ramey. [The funniest barihunk concert proposal we heard about was going to be called "No Shirts Allowed" and it was supposed to be an AIDS fundraiser in New York].

The Edmonton team has managed to bring in three of the hottest and most vocally gifted baritones singing in the world today and they all happen to be Canadians. Gordon Bintner, Elliot Madore, and Philippe Sly will join forces with conductor Bill Eddins for a program of from music from Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's Macbeth, Rossini's Barber of Seville, and Wagner's Tannhäuser.

The concert will be on Monday, March 24, 2014 at 7:30 PM at Enmax Hall in the Winspear Centre in Edmonton. For lovers of barihunks, we have to think that this is the hottest ticket of 2014! We've heard all three singers live and we can pretty much guarantee a night of visual and aural bliss. You can listen to six audio selections from Elliot Madore on his website.

Phillipe Sly sings Gustav Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen":

 Gordon Binter performs at FestiVoix:

This season, Elliot Madore continues as a member of the ensemble at Opernhaus Zürich where he made his role debut as Valentin in Jan Philipp Gloger’s new production of Gounod's Faust. The title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni will serve as his return to both Oper Philadelphia and the Glyndebourne Festival in the summer of 2014. Future seasons will see him at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opernhaus Zurich, Glyndebourne Festival, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse.

Philippe Sly continues as an Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera in the 2013 – 2014 season. He will make his debut at Opéra de Lyon in Laurent Pelly’s production of Rossini's Le comte Ory as Raimbaud and will be seen as Bartolo in San Francisco Opera’s Barber for Families. He also opens the Montreal Symphony Orchestra’s season as Méphistophélès in concert performances of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust under Kent Nagano. In concert, Sly makes his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in Fauré’s Requiem and with Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal in Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, both under Yannick Nézet-Séguin.  

In the past few months, Gordon Bintner made his debut in Berlin with the role of Bill in Bernstein’s A Quiet Place with Ensemble Modern and Lescaut in Massenet’s Manon at l’Opera de Montreal. He made his European debut singing the role of Colline in Puccini’s La Bohème with Angers-Nantes Opera in France. Other appearances included the role of Nardo in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera at the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. Operatic performances in 2014 include the role of Don Alfonso in the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio’s production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte.

Barihunks (and hunkentenors) featured on BuzzFeed

We saw a dramatic uptick in traffic to our site yesterday with a sudden interest in posts from 2009 and 2010. We figured out pretty quickly that we must have been featured somewhere only to learn that we were a prominent part of BuzzFeed's "33 Opera Hunks Who Need To Serenade You Right Now." We have to say that they did a remarkable job of picking out 30+ of the steamiest, sexiest and most talented acoustic singing hunks on the planet.

Barihunks included are Matthew Worth, Randal Turner, Zachary Gordin, Ramin Karimloo, Duncan Rock, Philippe Sly, Chris Herbert, Hadleigh Adams, Beltran Iraburu, Tim McDevitt, Douglas Williams, Gordon Bintner, Mariusz Kwiecien, Erwin Schrott, Vasil Garvanliev, Nathan Gunn, David Adam Moore, Adrian Kramer, Matthew Morris, Jerome Vernier, Tom Corbeil, Kelly Markgraf, Jason Hardy, Donovan Singletary, John Brandon and Simon Keenlyside.

Do the math and it comes out to 78% baritones. That seems about right in our eyes.

Congratulations guys! Who says that sexy men don't increase the interest in opera? You got the coveted "WIN" button on BuzzFeed.

Also keep your eye out for a Barihunks feature in a major New York publication coming out this week.

Canadian Barihunks featured on CBC's "30 under 30"

The CBC recently ran a feature called "30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30." They surveyed Canada's conservatories, music competitions and professional training programs to come up with their list. Although we at Barihunks take the word "HOT" to mean sexy, it appears that they are going for a double meaning, with "HOT" also meaning "musicians with talent to keep an eye on," since they range in age from 8 to 28.

Both male singers featured are baritones who have appeared on our site and Philippe Sly even gets mentioned for regularly appearing on our site. We've heard other singers joke that Gordon Bintner is incapable of taking a bad picture and we couldn't agree more. Both Bintner and Sly are not only easy on the eyes, but they are indeed two of the most gifted musicians coming out of Canada.

As an aside, the featured soprano Wallis Giunta, is the girlfriend of barihunk John Brancy, who we've featured extensively of late. Small world!
 

Gordon Bintner (photo: Emily Ding)

Gordon Bintner (baritone)

Age: 25
From: Regina, Sask.
Hot because: The last 12 months have been huge for Bintner: he won first prize and the People's Choice Award at the 2012 Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio Competition, and in May he made his debut with L'Opéra de Montréal singing Lescaut in Massenet's Manon. We think he looks too sweet to portray womanizing Don Giovanni, but Bintner says it's his dream role.

Upcoming:
- February 2014, Toronto, Ont.: the role of Don Alfonso in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte with the COC's Ensemble Studio.

Philippe Sly (photo: Adam Scotti)

Philippe Sly (bass-baritone)

Age: 24
From: Ottawa, Ont.
Hot because: Sly has a way of impressing audiences and judges. He’s won both the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (which come with a cool $15,000 prize) and the Montreal International Musical Competition (add another $55,000 in winnings). Oh, he also makes frequent appearances on the popular Barihunks blog.

Upcoming:
- Sept. 12,15,16, Montreal, Que.: Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust with l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
- Dec. 6,7, Winnipeg, Man.: Handel’s Messiah with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
- March 15, Philadelphia, Penn.: Fauré’s Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

You can see the entire list at the CBC website. 

Gordon Bintner Wins Two Awards at COC Competition

Opera's new Golden Boy: Gordon Bintner

Canadian Gordon Bintner has kept the vocal competition winning streak alive for barihunks by winning not one, but two prizes, at the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio Competition. Opera's new Golden Boy walked away with both the coveted first prize and the People’s Choice Award.

Bintner performed Non più andrai from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Sibilar gli angui d’Aletto from Handel's Rinaldo to win the $5,000 first prize at the Toronto competition. 146 singers from Canada auditioned for a chance to perform, but only ten finalists were selected to perform in front of a live audience. The audience selected picked Bintner for the People’s Choice Award, for which he won  an additional $1,500.

Tenor Andrew Haji and mezzo-soprano Charlotte Burrage came in second and third place respectively.

Gordon Bintner performs at COC Competition (Chris Hutcheson/Canadian Opera Company)

Bintner recently impressed audiences with his portrayal of Nardo in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera with San Francisco Opera’s prestigious Merola Opera Program. He has performed as Figaro with Opera Nuova and recently made his European debut as Colline in Puccini's La Bohème with Angers Nantes Opéra.

He previously won the OSM Standard Life Competition and debuted with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

Introducing barihunk Jeremy Bowes:

Bintner can be seen on Sunday, December 2 at the Opéra de Montréal gala concert featuring fellow barihunks Etienne Dupuis, Philippe Sly and Jeremy Bowes, as well as Antoine Bélanger, Julie Boulianne, Marianne Fiset, Wallis Giunta, Hélène Guilmette, Miriam Khalil, Marianne Lambert, Kurt Lehmann, Allyson McHardy, Kimy Mc Laren and David Pomeroy.Visit their website for tickets and additional information.

If you enjoy looking at barihunks year around, make sure to buy our 2013 Barihunks Charity Calendar. All of our proceeds go to benefit young artists like the ones that Gordon Bintner participated in to further his studies. Buy yours today before the holiday crush.

Barihunks to compete in Canadian Opera Company Competition

Gordon Bintner

Ten Canadian singers, including three baritones, have been selected to compete for a place in the Canadian Opera Company's Ensemble Studio training program. The final ten participants were selected from a pool of 146 singers. Saskatchewan native Gordon Bintner, who has been featured on this site leads the pack of low voices, which also includes Ontario native Clarence Frazer and Prince Edward Island native Nathan Keoughan

The competition will be held on November 29th at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. The competition is open to the public. Tickets are $15 and be available for purchase online, by calling COC Ticket Services at 416-363-8231, or in person at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts Box Office, located at 145 Queen St. W., Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Nathan Keoughan

Each finalist must perform two arias to showcase his or her vocal technique and range before an audience and panel of judges.  Organizers will award a first prize of $5,000, a second prize of $3,000, a third prize of $1,500 as well as a People’s Choice Award of $1,500.

The jury, headed by Canadian Opera Company general director Alexander Neef, will select an unspecified number of finalists to join the COC’s 2013/2014 Ensemble Studio. Graduates of the program include stars such as Ben Heppner, Isabel Bayrakdarian and David Pomeroy.

Other singers in the competition are mezzo-soprano Charlotte Burrag, soprano Aviva Fortunata, tenor Andrew Haji, mezzo-soprano Danielle MacMillan, tenor Michael Marino, soprano Lara Secord-Haid and soprano Kelsey Vicary.

Don't forget to buy you 2013 Barihunks Charity Calendar before the holiday rush:

CBC's "The Sexiest Barihunks in Canada"

Mike Nyby (L) and Philip Kalmanovitch (R)

We've been featured and even interviewed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and they've mentioned us a number of times. But they've stepped it up a notch with their "The Sexiest Barihunks in Canada" feature.

The post features four barihunks hot enough to melt the ice caps north of the Yukon: Etienne Dupuis, Phillipe Sly, Phillip Addis and Brett Polegato. The singers are asked about their sexiest features, sexiest roles, workout routine and what they'd sing to woo a lover. It is definitely worth checking out and we appreciate the ongoing love from the CBC, who we adore more than a Molson at a hockey game.

We're pretty sure that limiting it to four singers was more about who they could successfully contact than creating a comprehensive list. We're pretty certain that Canada has the highest per capita ratio of barihunks in the world. We've featured close to two dozen Canadians on this site, including three in last year's calendar: Philip Kalmanovitch, Jonathan Estabrooks and Aaron Agulay. Estabrooks will be reappearing in the 2013 calendar.

Daniel Okulitch in The Last Savage

Two Canadians barihunks are having huge international careers, Daniel Okulitch and John Relyea. Relyea is a regular at the Met and other major opera houses, while Okulitch is a fan favorite in opera houses across the globe. His performance in a loin cloth in  Menotti's "The Last Savage" at the Sante Fe Opera still has opera cognoscenti buzzing with delight.

Elliot Madore is on the verge of breaking into the upper tier of singers. He has a redesigned website and has caught the attention of opera general managers everywhere. We recently received emails from opera executives in three countries praising this gifted young artist.

Other Canadians who we've featured include Mike Nyby, Stephen Hegedus, Olivier Laquerre, Tyler Duncan, Riley McMitchell, Peter Barrett, Gordon Bintner, Philip Kalmanovitch, Benjamin Covey and Michael Adair (who co-opted "Barihunk" for his Twitter name).

 John Relyea sings "Scintille, diamant" from The Tales of Hoffmann":

Quartet of Barihunks arrives at Merola

Hadleigh Adams

It's not often that we post about events in the same city two days in a row, but there has been quite a bit of chatter about some of the barihunks in the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. It started with and email that read, "Have you seen Hadleigh Adams? Whoa!" It's been a steady stream of "tips" about this model turned opera singers since he arrived in San Francisco. 

Of course, we were tipped off about the New Zealand native years ago by our eagle eye down under in Australia. Adams will be performing in Merola's Schwabacher Summer Concerts on July 5th and 7th, where he'll be performing Ralph's aria "Quand la flamme de l'amour" from Bizet's rarely heard La jolie fille de Perth. The concert on July 5th is at the Herbst Theater and the July 7th concert is free to the public at Yerba Buena Gardens. 

Seth Mease Carico as he appears in the Barihunks calendar

Also at Merola is Seth Mease Carico, who is one of our 2012 Charity Calendar models and a regular on this site. Carico, recently scored another critical success in his young career as Leonidas in the Fort Worth Opera's production of Mark Adamo's Lysistrata. Don't miss the pictures we posted of Carico and fellow barihunk Michael Mayes in drag at a mock "Battle of the Sexes" event promoting Lysistrata. Admittedly, he won't be a contestant on RuPaul's Drag Race, but it ranks as one of our favorite posts of all time. 

Carico will also be performing in Merola's Schwabacher Summer Concerts and singing Nick Shadow's music from Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. We've had the good fortune of having seen this American singer a few times and he's an artist well ahead of years and not to be missed. 

Joseph Lattanzi: Opera singer or Brooks Brothers model?

We've been following the budding career of Joseph Lattanzi with great interest. Like Adams and Carico, he is perfectly suited to where opera is heading with HD broadcasts. All three singers are perfectly suited for the stage, but also have the looks to start hearts fluttering on the big screen. He's also one of our 2012 Barihunks Charity Calendar models.

We've posted about Lattanzi's recent work with the Seattle Young Artists Program and added him to our growing list of singing competition winners (Palm Beach Opera Junior Division Winner). 

Lattanzi will be performing in Merola's Postcard from Morocco by Dominick Argento on July 19th and 21st at San Francisco's Cowell Theater. 

Gordon Bintner

A new singer to us is bass Gordon Bintner, who joins the growing list of Canadian barihunks on the site. The Saskatchewan native attended McGill University and studied with the great baritone Sanford Sylvan. (As an aside, recent Merola sensation and Metropolitan Opera National Council winner Philippe Sly also studied at McGill.) Bintner also has been wowing judges at competitions, having won the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Standard Life competition in 2011. 

Bintner wil be performing Mozart’s La finta giardiniera with Merola on August 2nd and 4th at San Francisco's Cowell Theater. 

You can see all of the wonderful Merola singers at their Grand Finale on August 18th. Tickets and memberships can be purchased online. 

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com