Q&A with Barihunk and Fitness Instructor Zacharias Niedzwiecki

Zacharias Niedzwiecki

Chicago-based barihunk Zacharias Niedzwiecki is new to our site and came to our attention earlier this year when he performed in Purcell's The Fairy Queen at Long Beach Opera. He received his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University, where he performed in numerous productions, including the role of Connie Rivers in the collegiate premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's The Grapes of Wrath, Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance as The Pirate King, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann as Schlémiel, Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel as Jimmy/Cypress Stark, and Puccini's La Bohème as Colline.

Niedzwiecki is in his second year as a member of the Professional Diploma in Opera Program at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts in conjunction with Chicago Opera Theater. Last season he made his debut this with Chicago Opera Theater in Frank Martin’s The Love Potion as Duke Hoël, covered the role of Oberon in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Chicago Opera Theater and Long Beach Opera, and appeared in the US premiere of Phillip Glass’ The Perfect American.

This season you can see Zacharias with Chicago Opera Theater in Menotti’s The Consul as Assan, the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ Elizabeth Cree as both Mr. Etcher and Karl Marx. He will also be covering multiple roles with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in Gregory Spears’s opera Fellow Travelers.

Niedzwiecki is also a cycle instructor and yoga teacher keeps his body as fit as his voice. He answered some questions for us about his career, his fitness routine and a little about his personal interests.

Zacharias Niedzwiecki in Long Beach Opera's The Fairy Queen (photo: Liz Lauren)

1. What drew you to a career in opera? I was first drawn to the beauty of opera. When I was young, I thought that it was the most beautiful art form I ever experienced. I wanted to somehow be that beautiful too, so I aspired to be an opera singer. Somehow those aspirations became reality. 

2. You are a cycle instructor and yoga teacher. Tell us about that and what got you started in fitness? I first got started in fitness simply to get in shape. I didn't feel entirely comfortable in my own skin so I made the choice to change that. Years later is just part of my lifestyle, besides teaching fitness working out everyday is just part of my routine. Some people read the paper with their coffee in the morning, I workout. 

Zacharias Niedzwiecki teaching yoga

3. Do you feel that being in shape helps you on stage?I absolutely feel that being in shape helps many aspects of stage. I first started with vinyasa yoga. I read so many articles about singers who have worked out and became too tight to be successful in an operatic career. I didn't want that so I chose yoga as a way to tone and refine my movements. Being in shape allows in my opinion for you to have more bodily awareness on stage and at the same time look good doing it. 

4. How do you respond to people who say that working out can restrict proper breathing for singers? As far as restricting proper breathing for singers I completely understand this thought, it's valid. For that reason I believe a work out regimen should be balanced. That's why I combine workouts in yoga, cycling, and interval training. Yoga itself is about breath and movement, lengthening the body and flexibility. Therefore I feel it is essential to incorporate yoga into all workouts routines. If and when I lift, I only lift so much that I can still have proper form and not so much weight that I ever strain. Regardless the voice should come first, if you notice something has begun to restrict your breath stop doing it. 

Zacharias Niedzwiecki

5. Do you think the advent of HD broadcasts has changed the expectation of how a singer should look? Absolutely, I believe it has cause viewers to once again rethink this art form. Opera is an aural art form and a visual art form. With this in mind, it now being broadcasted, and our more health conscious society I feel the expectation have shifted for you to not only sound incredible, but for you to also look the role and look good doing it. 

6. Are there any roles in particular that you really hope to get to perform someday? There are a couple, I would absolutely love to perform the role Hawkins Fuller from Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears. The story is heart wrenching, the music is gorgeous and I would love to perform as a gay character. I would also like to perform the role of Escamillo from Carmen by Bizet. 

7. What other passions do you have aside from music? I am an avid botanist, my apartment in Chicago is filled with plants. I really enjoy learning about plants and spending time researching about them. I feel growing up gardening vegetables and flower at home in Northern Michigan instilled this passion.

Zacharias Niedzwiecki

8. What do you listen to other than opera? I listen to all kinds of music. Teaching both yoga and cycling and having to make these very different playlists I have to listen to and search through a large variety of music. I really enjoy lately electronic house with female vocals and more chill ambient music like Olafur Arnalds. 

9. Tell us something about yourself that people would be surprised to know. I took a year off from singing when I was 23 and became a research field technician of a Jaguar population density study in Panama. I lived there for about a year in the mountains, hiking everyday setting up camera traps along the mountain ridges.

Lee Gregory in Southern California premiere of As One

Baritone Lee Gregory

Lee Gregory is the latest barihunk to take on the role of Hannah, the transgender protagonist of Laura Kaminsky's groundbreaking opera As One. Gregory will play "Hannah before" and Danielle Marcelle Bond will portray "Hannah after" in Long Beach Opera's production directed by David Schweizer. This will be the first performance in Southern California. 

Performances will be on May 13, 20 and 21 and tickets are available online. There will be a pre-opera talk with Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek one hour before each performance.

Kaminsky was inspired to write As One after reading an article in the New York Times in 2008 about a New Jersey marriage in which one of the parties transitioned from male to female, transforming the couple from straight to gay. The opera is based on the life experience of noted filmmaker Kimberly Reed.

As One provides insights into both the personal and philosophical questions at the core of how personhood is defined, as well as into the compromised civil and humans rights of transgender individuals in the broader societal framework.

LaMarcus Miller to star in premiere of first opera about Iraqi War

LaMarcus Miller

LaMarcus Miller, who first appeared on this site competing in the Met Auditions, has landed the leading baritone role in Tobin Stokes and Heather Raffo's Fallujah at the Long Beach Opera. Miller sang in the workshop at the Kennedy Center, which was one of a series over the last four years including at Arena Stage, the Noor Theater in New York City and The Culture Project in New York City. The Long Beach production will be the official world premiere.

The opera's characters were inspired by people United States Marine Christian Ellis encountered, including fallen comrades. In 2004, Christian Ellis was a young US Marine fighting in the Iraq War. He suffered a broken back when his platoon was ambushed, and was one of the few survivors. When eventually he returned home he found himself battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Ellis has attempted suicide four times since returning from Iraq and used developing the opera as a vehicle to deal with the stress. Ellis' mother was a singer who pushed him to play the trumpet and start singing lessons when he was nine years old.
 

The real US Marine Christian Ellis

Award-winning Iraqi-American playwright and librettist Heather Raffo met Ellis in the winter of 2011. After extensive interviews began the process with composer Tobin Stokes of translating elements of Ellis's wartime experience into the opera. Fallujah is believed to be the first opera to deal with the Iraqi War.

Performances will run from March 12-20 the National Guard Armory in Long Beach. Tickets are available online. 

In 2012, LaMarcus Miller won First Place at the Nico Castel International Master Singer Competition at Carnegie Hall. That same year he won the Encouragement Award at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition for the Eastern Region.

MAKE SURE TO ORDER YOUR 2016 BARIHUNKS CALENDAR BEFORE THE NEW YEAR ARRIVES; 18 OF THE WORLD'S HOTTEST SINGERS FROM 9 COUNTRIES.

 

Happy Birthday, Philip Glass!!!

Martin Acrainer in Orphée (left) and Spuren der Verirrten (right)

Nary a year goes by where we don't celebrate the birthday of American composer Philip Glass who turns 77 today.

Many of his 20+ operas have become staples of the standard repertory including Hydrogen Jukebox, Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, Akhnaten, and The Voyage. We've featured many of the more obscure operas on this site, including Kepler, Les Enfants Terribles, The Perfect American, Orphée and Galileo Galilei, which have become popular vehicles for barihunks like Martin Achrainer, Philip Cutlip, Matthew Worth, Nicholas Nelson and Timothy McDevitt.

Glass was born in Baltimore and studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble.

Guillaume Andrieux in Philip Glass' Les Enfants Terribles

Glass likes speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.

Upcoming performances of Glass operas include The Trial, which will run at the Theater Magdeburg from April 1-May 8 with barihunk Johnny Herford as Josef K. In the U.S., Hydrogen Jukebox will play at the Long Beach Opera from May 30-June 7. Perhaps the most popular Glass opera this season is Akhnaten, which will play in Antwerp in February, Gent in March, Heidelberg in March and Maastricht in June.

Ed Parks to sing Thérèse Raquin in Long Beach and Chicago

Ed Parks

Barihunk Ed Parks is singing the role of Laurent with the Long Beach Opera on January 24th and February 1. He then performs the role with the Chicago Opera Theater from February 20-28.  

Based on  French writer Émile Zola's novel, Tobias Picker's sensual score for Thérèse Raquin mirrors the lovers' turbulent affair. The Long Beach and Chicago casts both star Mary Ann Stewart as Thérèse, Matthew DiBattista as her husband Camille and Suzan Hanson as Madame Raquin.

The Long Beach Opera will offer students tickets for $15 per ticket in an effort to introduce a young audiences to opera.  There is a limit of two tickets per student.

 Mary Ann Stewart and Ed Parks in duet from Thérèse Raquin (rehearsal):

Thérèse and Camille Raquin are a married couple who are reunited with an old friend, Laurent. It soon becomes clear that Thérèse and Laurent are more than old friends as heated confessions of undying love abound between the two. The two conspire to murder the sickly Camille and succeed in dumping him into the Seine to make possible the consecration of their love. The guilty couple soon becomes the object of torment by both their own guilty consciences and the ghost of Camille.

Beginning March 30th, the former Lindemann Young Artist, returns to the Metropolitan Opera to sing the Flemish Deputy alongside fellow barihunk Simon Keenlyside in Verdi's Don Carlo. 

Nmon Ford takes on Ernest Bloch's Macbeth

Nmon Ford

When one thinks of the operatic version of Macbeth, one immediately thinks of Giuseppe Verdi. However, the  Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch wrote a highly dramatic version in 1906, which has only been performed once in the U.S., at the Juilliard School of Music in New York in 1973.

The opera is about to double the number of U.S. performances it has received, with performances at the Long Beach Opera from June 15-23, 2013 and again at the Chicago Opera Theater from September 13-21, 2014. The Long Beach performances will feature Panamanian-American barihunk Nmon Ford in the title role and Suzan Hanson as his scheming wife Lady Macbeth. Adding to the dramatic effect will be the location of the performance, which will be in a vast industrial space at the Port of Los Angeles. The Chicago Opera Theater has not confirmed casting.

The great Inge Borkh sings Bloch's Macbeth:

Bloch’s opera reveals the influence  of Wagner's music dramas and Claude Debussy's symbolist opera "Pelleas et Melisande."  Bloch's probing and dramatic score powerfully illuminates the central couple, and deeply examines the temptation of promised power and its influence over our actions. but it did not receive its first performance until November 30, 1910 by the Opéra-Comique Paris. After the premiere production, the opera was staged in 1938 in Naples, but was then banned on orders of the Fascist government. Subsequently, the opera was produced in Rome in 1953, and in Trieste.