Barihunk quartet featured in N.C. premiere of Silent Night

Kyle Guglielmo, Gabriel Preisser, Brian Banion and Gregory Gerbrandt

Piedmont Opera will present the North Carolina premiere of Kevin Puts' Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night beginning on October 27th. The opera will feature a quartet of barihunk, including Gabriel Preisser as Lieutenant Audebert, Gregory Gerbrandt as Lieutenant Gordon, Brian Banion’s as Lieutenant Horstmayer and Kyle Guglielmo as Ponchel. Tickets are available online.

 

The opera. with a libretto by Mark Campbell, recounts the true story of a spontaneous cease-fire among Scottish, French and Germans during World War I during one of the bloodiest wars in human history. Enemies become brothers as they share Christmas and bury their dead.

 

Liam Bonner sings Lieutenant Audebert's aria:

 

The story was based on the screenplay by Christian Carion for the Oscar-nominated 2005 French film Joyeux Nöel, which dramatized actual events during WWI during the days before Christmas 1914.

The Minnesota Opera presented the world premiere of Silent Night in November 2011 with a cast that included barihunks Craig Irvin as Lieutenant Horstmayer, Gabriel Preisser as Lieutenant Gordon,  Mike Nyby as William Dale, Liam Bonner as Lieutenant Audebert, Troy Cook as Father Palmer, Joseph Beutel as the British Major, Ben Wager as the General and Andrew Wilkowske as Ponchel.
 

The 2018 Barihunks Calendar and Photo Book

Our 2018 Barihunks Calendar, which includes 20 of opera's sexiest men is now available for purchase HERE. In response to reader demand, we've also added a Barihunks Photo Book this year, which includes additional photos that don't appear in the calendar. You can purchase that HERE. The New Year is approaching faster than you think!

Jonathan Woody and Kyle Guglielmo in scenes from new American operas

Jonathan Woody and Kyle Guglielmo

Bass-barihunk Jonathan Woody and barihunk Kyle Guglielmo will be part of an upcoming showcase of scenes from new American operas. They will perform with the American Opera Project's (AOP) "Composers & The Voice: Six Scenes 2016," a concert of opera scenes from ten artists emerging in the world of contemporary opera.

The libretti cover a wide range of stories, from Sigmund Freud and Mabel Dodge Luhan to events taking place in a spaceship, an asylum, and a uterus. The composers Matthew Barnson, Carlos R. Carrillo, Nell Shaw Cohen, Marc LeMay, Cecilia Livingston, and Sky Macklay and librettists Edward Einhorn, Duncan McFarlane, Emily Roller, and Mark Sonnenblick, were chosen by AOP to spend a year creating new works in its bi-annual fellowship program Composers & the Voice.

The performances will be held on Friday, September 30 at 8:00pm at South Oxford Space (138 S. Oxford St.) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the home of AOP, and on Sunday, October 2 at 2:30pm at the National Opera Center (330 7th Ave, 7th floor) in Manhattan. Tickets range from $10-$25 general admission and are available online. 

Kyle Guglielmo sings "Joey, Joey, Joey" from Most Happy Fella:

Woody and Guglielmo will be joined by coloratura soprano Tookah Sapper, lyric soprano Jennifer Goode Cooper, mezzo-soprano Caitlin McKechney and tenor Blake Friedman.

Guglielmo has appeared with LoftOpera, Sarasota Opera, American Opera Projects, American Lyric Theater, The Princeton Festival, Piedmont Opera, and the Westfield Symphony (now New Jersey Festival Opera). He sang Dr. Pill in the premiere of Daron Hagen's Little Nemo in Slumberland at Sarasota Opera.  Kyle made his Carnegie Hall Debut in April singing the Celebrant in Leonard Bernstein's Celebrations from MASS with the Yale Symphony, arranged and conducted by John Mauceri.

American bass-baritone, Jonathan Woody, obtained his Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Maryland, College Park and completed his Master of Music degree in Early Music at McGill University.  He has recorded with the Trinity Wall Street Choir under the Musica Omnia label, most recently being featured on the premiere recording of Ralf Yusuf Gawlick's Missa Gentis Humanae for 8 voices. In May 2014, Quill Classics featured him as soloist for a concert of German and French music by Brooklyn Baroque.

Emerging Barihunk: Kyle Guglielmo

Kyle Guglielmo (Photo: Dave Brown)

Kyle Guglielmo is new to this site and is another sign that the barihunk bench is deep. He'll be performing on Sunday, September 23 at the Emerging Artist Operatic Showcase at Christ and St. Stephen's Church in New York City at 3 PM. Guglielmo will be joined by soprano Jodi Burns and tenor Adam Ulrich in selections by Mozart, Bellini, Puccini, Donizetti, Rossini, Gounod, Richard Rodgers and Frank Loesser. The event is free to the public.

According to his website, on November 10, Guglielmo will be premiering Daron Hagen's opera Little Nemo in Slumberland with the Sarasota Opera. Based on Winsor McCay's 1905-1914 newspaper comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland recounts the adventures of a boy over the course of two nights on a quest to save Slumberland from the Evil Emperor Sol who wants it to be bright all night and day.  Nemo's adventures along the way include encounters with a crystal enchantress, menacing giants, a floating bed, a balloon ride, and a palace that turns upside down.