La Nuova Musica will be swapping barihunks in the role of Mercutio for their performance of Cavalli's La Calisto tonight at Wigmore Hall. James Newby will be filling in for Jonathan McGovern in a cast that also includes two of the sexiest countertenors in opera, Jake Arditti as Satirino and Tim Mead as Endomione. Bass-barihunk Edward Grint also appears as Silvano in a cast headed by early music specialist Lucy Crowe as Calisto. Tickets are available online.
Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, first performed in Venice in 1651, blends comedy and tragedy with music of sensuous beauty and irresistible charm. The opera’s libretto is based on the ancient Greek myth of the nymph Callisto as related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.
At the age of 22, Newby was awarded Third Prize overall at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation
International Song Competition in 2015 and won the Richard
Tauber Prize for the the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder.
Previous winners of the prize include Jonathan
Lemalu and Simon Keenlyside.
James Newby sings Finzi's "Come away, come away death":
In September, Newby performed on the last night of the BBC Proms in a
concert that featured international operatic superstar Juan Diego
Flórez.
In the summer of 2016, Newby joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and is currently continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Only a month left to order your 2017 Barihunks in Bed Calendar.
La Nuova Musica will be swapping barihunks in the role of Mercutio for their performance of Cavalli's La Calisto tonight at Wigmore Hall. James Newby will be filling in for Jonathan McGovern in a cast that also includes two of the sexiest countertenors in opera, Jake Arditti as Satirino and Tim Mead as Endomione. Bass-barihunk Edward Grint also appears as Silvano in a cast headed by early music specialist Lucy Crowe as Calisto. Tickets are available online.
Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, first performed in Venice in 1651, blends comedy and tragedy with music of sensuous beauty and irresistible charm. The opera’s libretto is based on the ancient Greek myth of the nymph Callisto as related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.
At the age of 22, Newby was awarded Third Prize overall at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation
International Song Competition in 2015 and won the Richard
Tauber Prize for the the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder.
Previous winners of the prize include Jonathan
Lemalu and Simon Keenlyside.
James Newby sings Finzi's "Come away, come away death":
In September, Newby performed on the last night of the BBC Proms in a
concert that featured international operatic superstar Juan Diego
Flórez.
In the summer of 2016, Newby joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and is currently continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Only a month left to order your 2017 Barihunks in Bed Calendar. Enjoy opera's hottest men year around!
La Nuova Musica will be swapping barihunks in the role of Mercutio for their performance of Cavalli's La Calisto tonight at Wigmore Hall. James Newby will be filling in for Jonathan McGovern in a cast that also includes two of the sexiest countertenors in opera, Jake Arditti as Satirino and Tim Mead as Endomione. Bass-barihunk Edward Grint also appears as Silvano in a cast headed by early music specialist Lucy Crowe as Calisto. Tickets are available online.
Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, first performed in Venice in 1651, blends comedy and tragedy with music of sensuous beauty and irresistible charm. The opera’s libretto is based on the ancient Greek myth of the nymph Callisto as related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.
James Newby sings Finzi's "Come away, come away death":
At the age of 22, Newby was awarded Third Prize overall at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation
International Song Competition in 2015 and won the Richard
Tauber Prize for the the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder.
Previous winners of the prize include Jonathan
Lemalu and Simon Keenlyside.
In September, Newby performed on the last night of the BBC Proms in a
concert that featured international operatic superstar Juan Diego
Flórez.
In the summer of 2016, Newby joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and is currently continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Only a month left to order your 2017 Barihunks in Bed Calendar. Enjoy opera's hottest men year around!
The English Touring Opera wraps up their Spring season today, which included barihunks Nicholas Lester, Grant Doyle, Jan Capiński
and Peter Brathwaite. The company performed Donizetti's The Wild Man of the West Indies(Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo) and his The Siege of Calais, as well asPuccini's La bohème.
Peter Brathwaite, who has been a regular on this site and appeared in two of our charity calendars, was a guest on Chris Mann's BBC show to discuss the English Touring Opera shows, as well as his career. You can listen to the interview HERE, which begins at the 1:48:30 mark.
Simon Wallfisch
The English Touring Opera's Fall season opens on October 1st and will feature Debussy'sPelléas et Mélisande, Massenet's Werther and Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann. A number of barihunks will be featured in the new season, including Jonathan McGovern as Pelleas and Simon Wallfisch (aka The Singing Cellist) as Albert in Werther. Additional information about the upcoming season is available online.
We somehow lost track of Jonathan McGovern after his critically-acclaimed performances as the avatar Jake in Nico Muhly's Two Boys at the English National Opera in 2011. At the time, he had just taken 2nd Prize at the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and was joining the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme.
He recently caught our attention again as Ulysses at the Iford Opera Festival production of Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses. Rian Evan said his "burnished baritone embraces both the heroism of Ulysses and the emotional torture of this culminating episode of his odyssey." It's amazing to think that this is the same guy who played the baby faced boy n Two Boys. He next takes on Sid in Puccini's La fanciulla del West at ENO in October and then sings the role of the captain in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at Grand Théâtre de Genève with fellow barihunk Michael Nagy as Onegin.
Behind the scenes with Jonathan McGovern and Louise Alder:
Other engagements this season have included Polynices in Julian Anderson’s world premiere The Thebans at ENO, the role of Adam in a staged version of Haydn’s The Creation for
Vocal Futures at the Ambika P3 in London, the St John Passion with
Winchester Music Club, and a recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Le Reniement de Saint Pierre where he sang the role of Jesus.
German barihunk Dominik Köninger has kept the baritone winning streak alive by winning the 2011 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition. Köninger won £10,000 for his first place finish. As we've been reporting, baritones Jonathan Beyer, Gabriel Preisser, Andrei Bondarenko, Mark Diamond, Philippe Sly and Konstantin Shushakov have been cleaning up at various vocal award competitions. We've dubbed this the "Golden Age of Baritones" and Köninger's win only reinforces our claim that we're in the greatest era ever for low voices.
Even the prize for best duo (singer and accompanist) went to a baritone, as Jonathan McGovern and his accompanist Timothy End walked away that coveted prize. The duo was awarded £5,000 for winning the prize.
Unfortunately, the competition posts video of the awards celebration, but not of any of the singing (a curious omission). Below the video we've added two sound clips of Köninger, so that you can actually hear his artistry. He's performing Johann Strauß's "Brüderlein" and Ravel's Chanson épique. Here is the announcement of the winners:
Two barihunks have survived to the Final Four in the Wigmore Hall/Kohl Foundation International Song Competition that we reported on a few days ago. Jonathan McGovern, who we first featured when he starred in Nico Muhly's "Two Boys" is one of the finalists. The other is German baritone Dominik Köninger who was new to the site. The first prize winner will receive £10,00, with the next two finishers receiving £5,000 and £2,500 respectively.
The final round will take place on Thursday, September 8. The finalists can perform songs in any language as long as the lied was written after 1900. They have up to 30 minutes to perform their selections. The non-baritones in the finals are mezzo Dorottya Lang and tenor Stuart Jackson.
Born in Heidelberg, the German baritone Dominik Köninger studied in Karlsruhe with Prof. Roland Hermann. Since his debut in 2004, he has performed at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Hamburg State Opera, Staatstheater Stuttgart, Theater an der Wien or Bavarian State Opera. Starting with the 2012/13 season, Dominik will be an ensemble member of the Komische Oper Berlin and he will make his debut at NNT in Tokyo in 2013.
Here is Köninger singing Mozart's "Hai gia vinta la causa... Vedro mentr'io sospirio" from "Le nozze di Figaro":
Winner of the 2nd Prize at this year's Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Jonathan McGovern read Music at King’s College London and continued his studies with Philip Doghan and Audrey Hyland. He was winner of the gold medal and 1st Prize at the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition 2010. Recent highlights include recitals at Chester Music Festival, St James’ Piccadilly, the Forge Camden, Kings Place and the National Portrait Gallery. He was a member of the prestigious Royal Academy of Music Song Circle, and will join the Britten–Pears Young Artists in September for a new production of Albert Herring. He made his ENO debut this summer as Jake in the world-première of Nico Muhly’s opera Two Boys.
We couldn't find an audio or video clip of Jonathan McGovern to share with you. Admittedly, we find this a bid odd for a singer.
Festival founder Jesse Blumberg (L) & David Adam Moore (R)
We are huge fans of barihunk Jesse Blumberg, not just for his glorious singing and good looks, but as an impressario. Blumberg is the founder of the Five Boroughs Music Festival which is bringing interesting and entertaining music to all five boroughs in New York City.
The Festival's new season will kick off with the "Five Borough Songbook" featuring another one of our favorites, barihunk David Adam Moore, who will be joined by tenor Alex Richardson, soprano Martha Guth and mezzo Blythe Gaissart. They will be performing new songs from some of the best composers in the world today. Readers of this site will know that we're huge proponents of (good) new music and this performance promises and abundance of great music. Many of the composers have had their music prominently featured on this site, including Glen Roven, Jorge Martin, Ricky Ian Gordon and Daron Hagen.
The 20 songs will be premiered at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn on October 6, 2011. Click HERE for tickets and performance information.
Michael Kelly (L), Duncan Rock (Both C) & Dominik Koeninger (R)
Fans of Jesse Blumberg will be thrilled to learn that he is currently at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition in London, England. The competition is dedicated to the art of lied and requires singers to perform in at least three languages. Blumberg will be performing with accompanist Jonathan Ware on September 5 and tickets can be purchased HERE. Other barihunks in this year's competition include Michael Kelly (whose entire recital we recently featured online), Andrew Ashwin, Duncan Rock, Jonathan McGovern and Dominik Koeninger.
For the next two weeks we will be accepting submissions for our first Barihunks charity calendar, which will benefit young artist programs. Send High Res photos and a brief bio to Barihunks@gmail.com
The world of opera is always looking for the next great piece that will squeeze its way into the standard repertory. The Met premiered John Corigliano's masterpiece twenty years ago and perhaps only a few operas have enjoyed such instant acclaim in the last two decades. Some that come to mind are Henze's "L'Upupa," Brett Dean's "Bliss," Mark Adamo's "Little Women," Birdwhistle's "The Minotaur," Saariaho's "L'amour de Loin," Ricky Ian Gordon's "The Grapes of Wrath," Heggie's "Dead Man Walking" and "Moby Dick," Philip Glass' "Hydrogen Jukebox" and "Appomattox" and John Adam's "Doctor Atomic."
Those have been outnumbered by some memorable flops led by Howard Shore's "The Fly" and Michael Daugherty's "Jackie O." So we were overjoyed with the critical acclaim that has greated American composer Nico Multy's "Two Boys" at the English National Opera. There is nothing that we could possibly add to Norman Lebrecht's spot-on review in The Telegraph, which you can read in its entirety HERE. Lebrecht's article is a "must read" for a number of reasons, including his views about what opera needs to do to succeed and, in particular, appeal to young people.
Jonathan McGovern: Jake in Two Boys
The story of "Two Boys" begins when a teenage boy is stabbed. An older boy is caught on CCTV leaving the scene. An open-and-shut case, it would seem. But, as Detective Inspector Anne Strawson investigates the older boy's story, she uncovers a bizarre nexus of chatroom meetings, mysterious internet identities, supposed spy rings and disturbing cybersex, leading to a stunning conclusion.
Critic William Robin said the opera deserves its place on the Metropolitan Opera's 2013-14 schedule. He perfectly described the music in her review:
Muhly composed several tender, brief, solo arias for the principal characters, and engaging dialogues both online and off. Though his music suggests the throbbing postminimalism of John Adams, his most clear influences come from this side of the pond — the English choral tradition of Herbert Howells (evoked in a somewhat out-of-place church scene) and the operas of Britten. “Two Boys” teems with references to Britten, from the pealing gamelan-style gongs of “Death in Venice” to the finale, an ornate passacaglia straight out of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
The baritone role in the opera is sung by Jonthan McGovern who is new to this site. He was the winner of the 2nd Prize at the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and graduated with a first-class honours degree in Music from King’s College London. He completed a PGD in Vocal Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and continued his studies with Royal Academy Opera. He was winner of the gold medal and 1st Prize at the Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition 2010.
Recent operatic roles include Wu Tianshi and Pokayne in the première of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ opera Kommilitonen!; Shane Postcards from Dumbworld at Belfast Grand Opera Hosue; Delfa in Cavalli’s Il Giasone; Sid with Royal Academy Opera in John Copley’s first Albert Herring; Fiorello and Figaro cover Barber of Seville on tour with Armonico Consort Opera and Don Parmenione L’Occasione fa il ladro for RAO.
In September McGovern will join the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme to reprise the role of Sid for the Britten Festival in a new production conducted by Steuart Bedford and directed by Oliver Mears.
Click HERE for ticket and performance information.
