How could this marketing campaign not catch our attention?
Bass-barihunk Stephen Hegedus is currently performing Franz Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin at Against the Grain in Toronto along with mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó performing Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi. They are joined by accompanist Topher Mokrzewski.
Director Joel Ivany has put together this double-bill of two very different sounding song cycles, tied together by Death/Desire. Die schöne Müllerin is comprised of twenty songs that move from cheerful optimism to despair and tragedy. Messiaen's Harawi features twelve songs centering around the death of two lovers, thus providing a vehicle from the composer's exploration of the theme of love-death central to the myth of Tristan and Isolde.
The show opened on June 2nd to great acclaim and seats are limited for the two remaining performances tonight and tomorrow.
We recently posted about the two runs of the Whitsun Festival at Salzburg's highly successful production of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. The opening night performance on May 22 already has opera aficionados across the globe talking about the production, which included an all-star cast led by Christopher Maltman as Oreste, Cecilia Bartoli as Iphigénie, Michael Kraus as Thoas andTopi Lehtipu sings Pylade.
Iphigénie en Tauride
Beyond the great singing, much of the buzz has centered around an extremely fit Christopher Maltman's nude scene, which proves that a man can be as sexy at 45 than at 25. Maltman is no stranger to nudity, having bared all in the movie Juan, as well in the 2010 Salzburg production on Don Giovanni.
The Festival has already announced additional performances from August
19-28 to supplement the one remaining show on May 25. Fair warning if
you plan on attending, order your seats now because tickets are scarce.
Visit the Salzburg Festival website for additional information.
Christopher Maltman in Iphigénie en Tauride
With Iphigénie en Tauride, Gluck took the final step in his
mission of operatic reform, radically distancing himself from both the
formulaic opera seria, with its rigid sequence of numbers, and
traditional French opera, creating a psychologically sound musical drama
with self-contained scenes and integrated arias.
Christopher Maltman and Topi Lehtipu in Iphigénie en Tauride
Gluck had long since given the chorus an active role, and in this work,
the ballet scenes that were obligatory in Paris are no longer harmless,
non-committal amusements, but organically integrated in the action.
Gluck stated that opera “...should speak the language of the heart,
credibly portray great human passions, and serve poetry.”
Christopher Maltman inthe movie Juan and Don Giovanni in Salzburg
You can next catch Maltman at the Royal Opera in London as the title character in Don Giovanni with fellow barihunks Alex Esposito as Leporello and Nahuel Di Pierro as Masetto. He'll also be reunited with his fellow cast member from Iphigénie, Rolando Villazón, who is singing Don Ottavio.
Photos from the osterfestspiele, Monika Rittershaus and Salzburg
A reader is Germany pointed out that the current production of Lehar's Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) at the Theater Altenburg in Gera, Germany features two barihunks, one who is new to this site. The newcomer is the extremely sexy Marco Vassalli who performs the role of Graf Danilo. Laurence Meikle, who has appeared on this site a number of times, performs the role of Cascada.
What really caught our reader's eye was that the two singers perform a strip tease at the end of the show where they're left wearing nothing but a hat. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures, but we're looking and asking around! There is one performance remaining on November 16th and tickets are available online.
Marco Vassalli performs Lehar's Graf von Luxemburg:
Despite his name, Vassalli is a German baritone who studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany. From 2006 to 2012 he was a member of the ensemble at the Städtischen Bühnen Osnabrück. After his run in Die Lustige Witwe he heads to the Landestheater Flensburg to perform in Frank Wildhorn's Dracula.
Meikle will head to the Theater Nordhausen to perform Antonio in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Meikle graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2010 and has performed extensively throughout the United Kingdom and Europe.
Doug Carpenter as he appeared in the 2012 Barihunks Calendar
Last Sunday we posted about Doug Carpenter who had just won the Lotte Lenya Competition. The entire video of his winning set of songs is now available on YouTube, so we'd thought we'd share it with you. The American barihunk sang "C'est Moi" from Lerner and Lowe's Camelot, Pierrot's Tanzlied ("Mein Sehnen, Mein Wehnen") from Korngold's Die Tote Stadt, "This is New" from Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark and "Molasses to Rum" from Sherman Edwards' 1776. Shane Schag is accompanying him on piano.
Director Olivier Py has never been shy about featuring male nudity, whether in operas like Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet or Alban Berg's Lulu, or theater productions like Die Sonne at Volksbühne Berlin. His Hamlet featuring Stéphane Degout in the buff created quite a buzz last Spring at the Theater an der Wien. The production is now coming to the La Monnaie in Brussels starring Stéphane Degout again. He will be alternating the role with fellow barihunk Franco Pomponi.
We were also intrigued to see two of our favorite barihunks in smaller roles, Jérôme Varnier and Henk Neven. If you like shirtless guys...and lots of them...you may want to order your tickets when they go on sale October 10. Although there are thirteen performances, tickets are expected to be extremely scarce. Tickets will be available for as little as € 12.
Günter Papendell at the Komische Oper (center in Armida)
Günter Papendell, one of our favorite singers at the Komische Oper is returning to the stage in four performances of the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni. We first were introduced to the sexy German barihunk when a colleague forwarded us a picture of a nude Papendell backstage [see photo above].
We've since followed him in a series of critical successes in edgy operas like Odysseus and Così fan tutte o sia La scuola degli amanti, as well as in more more standard roles like Malatesta, Count Almaviva and Prince Yeletsky. One thing we love about him is the frequency in which he is shirtless or in some revealing outfit. Of course, the Komische Opera is notorious for showing some skin, with opera fans still talking about director Calixto Bieto's production of Gluck's Armida, which set a new standard for nudity in opera.
Günter Papendell in Odysseus
Performances of Don Giovanni will run from April 13-May 12 and tickets are available online. Later this season at the Komische, Papendell will be appearing as Demetrius in Britten's A Midsummer, Night's Dream, Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen, the title character in Rameau's Castor et Pollux and reprising his successful and sexy portrayal of Odysseus in the Claudio Monteverdi/ Elena Kats-Chernin trilogy of the same name.
We've been singing Dominik Köninger's praises ever since he wowed the judges at the 2011 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition. He's now been engaged to sing the lead of Orpheus in Komische Oper's controversial Monterverdi Trilogy.
The new musical interpretation by the Uzbek composer Elena Kats-Chernin is being performed in a single day, running from 11a.m. until 11p.m, as well individual performances of the three operas: Orpheus, Odysseus and Poppea. The work feautures around 200 artists on stage and (how can we say this delicately) is not for purists. Kat-Chermin has integrated jazz, klezmer, tango, and ragtime into the score.
Dominik Köninger
Köninger can also be seen this season at the Komische Oper as Ottakar in Der Freischütz, Schaunard in Puccini's La Bohème and Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute. His Papageno is his next appearance, which will be on Sunday, November 25. Tickets are available online.
Günter Papendell nude backstage and as Odysseus
Also in the trilogy is Günter Papendell as Odysseus. The young barihunk is also alternating Ottakar in Calixto Bieito's Der Freischütz with Köninger. The next performance is on November 23 and tickets are still available online. The next performance of Odysseus is not until Saturday, July 6, 2013.
The oft-shirtless Günter Papendell
Other operas at the Komische Oper include Verdi's La traviata, Handel's Xerxes, John Cages' Europera and Taner Akyol's children's opera Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.
Want to see more HOT MEN? They're available all year in our 2013 Barihunks Charity Calendar:
We've been touting Vasil Garvanliev as one of opera's sexiest up and coming stars for a few years now. He has landed the plum role of Kaspar in Opera Atelier's Der Freischutz, which is an underperformed work in North America. Make sure to check out our previous posts about this Garvanliev.
As with any Opera Atelier production, they have managed to create a sensuous production that manages to bring Weber's often stodgily performed piece to life. Robert Harris in the Toronto Globe & Mail wrote:
The most famous scene in Freischutz is the Wolf’s Glen scene,
where Max receives his doomed, magic bullets, and it’s here that
Atelier’s command of staging worked to full effect. The point of the
Wolf’s Glen scene is to shock and amaze, and the sight of a dozen
seemingly naked bodies, rushing across the stage, waving banners,
writhing in torment, haunting Max (and us) certainly did the trick. But
did so in a way that never overwhelmed the production, instead
heightening its spooky, frightening ambiance.
Curtis Sullivan as Samiel
We received an email a month ago from a singer that said, "Wait until you see Curtis Sullivan's outfit in Freischutz. You and your readers will be quite pleased." Well, we just got the photos and we are indeed quite pleased. Robert Harris wrote:
Curtis Sullivan was a truly malevolent and frightening Samiel, the Devil
figure in the piece, even though he performed his entire role seemingly
in the nude.
Der Freischutz dancers
There are two performances of Der Freischutz left on November 2nd and 3rd. Visit their website for additional performance information or to purchase tickets. On April 6th, the company will reprise their much heralded production of The Magic Flute with two barihunks, Olivier Laquerre and João Fernandes, as well as one of the sexiest tenors that we've ever seen, Aaron Ferguson.
Hot tenor Aaron Ferguson
Don't forget to click on the link in our sidebar to the right and purchase your 2013 Barihunks Charity Calendar. Once again, all proceeds will go to benefit young artists and young artist training programs. Last year, we donated to the Portland Opera Studio, Seagle Music Colony and bought music for six aspiring singers.
"Les Mamelles de Tirésias" is one of the most viewed operas on Barihunks mainly because of the Full Monty performance of Gabriel Bermudez. The opera has become increasingly popular in recent years, including recent performances at the Central City Opera with Daniel Belcher and Long Beach Opera with Robin Buck.
The famous Emilio Sagi production with Gabriel Bermudez;
The latest barihunk to take on the opera is Jonathan Estabrooks, who will be performing the role of Le Mari with the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute in Montreal. The performance will be at the Salle Claude-Champagne of l’Université de Montréal on August 15th. The performance will be staged with two pianos. Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias) is a surrealist two-act opéra bouffe by Francis Poulenc, based on the play of the same title by Guillaume Apollinaire, which was written in 1903 but first performed in 1917. The opera closes with the stern command, "Ô Français, faites des enfants!" ("O Frenchmen, make babies!"), and the success of this propaganda is perhaps seen in the fact that the first two sopranos cast in the role of Tiresias had to give it up before the premiere on account of pregnancy.
When we first saw these pictures, the naked body on the right was identified as baritone Nathan Berg. We've seen him perform and were confident that it wasn't him. A little further research revealed that he's a dancer in one of many nude scenes in Rameau's "Les Indes Galantes" at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. The scene pictured above is supposed to represent the Garden of Eden, which featured jocks and rap stars as symbols of our decaying society.
A shirtless Vittorio Prato
The opera goes on to deal with a number of topics that Rameau clearly never had to grapple with musically in his day, including consumerism, cocaine, illegal immigration and Islamic attitudes towards women (sexy women in lingerie are covered in burkas). We don't review operas and we weren't there, so we'll let you decide how you feel about the updated production concept by director Laura Scozzi.
Of course, what really caught our eye was one of our favorite barihunks, Vittorio Prato, prancing around shirtless on the "beach." Prato plays the role of Osman in the first act, but doesn't appear elsewhere in the opera. Prato can next be seen in Wolf-Ferrari's "Il segreto di Susanna" at the Opéra-Comique in Paris and then in the title role of Handel's "Imeneo" at the Théathe des Champs Elysées in Paris under Christopher Hogwood.
Nudity abounds in Théâtre du Capitole's latest production
Performances run through May 15 and additional information can be found at the Théâtre du Capitole website.
Add Stéphane Degout to the growing list of barihunks who have appeared nude on stage. The amazing French singer bares all in the Theater an der
Wien's production of Ambroise Thomas' "Hamlet." His dispair and self-mutilation manifests itself in stunning scene in Act 3 when he is bathed by Gertrude.
The production is by Olivier Py who transformed the stage into a cavern of human debauchery and
misery.
Degout last appeared on this site when he appeared in a dreamy cast of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande with fellow barihunk Jérôme Varnier. The two are reunited in this production, as Varnier appears the ghost. Stéphane Degout has become the leading lyric baritone in the French style since Francois Le Roux and Gerard Souzay, both of whom have appeared on this site.
The always intense and musically incisive Christine Schäfer portrays Ophelia, Phillip Ens is Claudius
and Frédéric Antoun is Laërtein in this co-production with the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. Now let's hope that someone brings it to the United States.
When we recently featured Seph Stanek on the site it created a mini-sensation. It turns out that the TV performer, off-Broadway star and opera singer has quite a posse of fans. One of them informed us that Stanek has joined the cast of the popular show Naked Boys Singing. The show is currently at the Kirk Theater on 42nd Street in New York City.
Seph Stanek in Naked Boys Singing promo photo
The 70-minute show originally opened at the Celebration Theater in Hollywood in 1998. The New York production opened a year later at the Actors Playhouse in the West Village. It closed after a 13-year run, but recently reopened at the current location. As the title states, the show features naked men who sing mostly gay-themed numbers about the male body and the love of the male form. We're not sure if Stanek is the first opera singer to appear in the cast, but we can tell you that the show has featured 71 performers, including two porn stars (Spencer Quest and Dean Markham). It's probably safe to say that's he's the first member of the Metropolitan Opera roster to appear in the show. Stanek made his Met debut in Aida last month.
Every so often we have a post that goes viral, which happened the other day with Texas barihunk Michael Mayes. The post of him after a workout preparing him for "Dead Man Walking" at the Tulsa Opera has been generating five times the traffic of most posts. We often get asked who the most popular singers are on the site and Mayes' photo will catapult him into the Top 10 pretty quickly.
However, no one has ever managed to attract the traffic of the Spanish barihunk Gabriel Bermudez. His shower pictures from Poulenc's "Les Mamelles de Tirésias" [seen above] still generate quadruple the interest of any other singer. Regular readers know that we don't post gratuitous nudity and only feature pictures from actual productions. We have learned one thing about our readers, which is that you do like a little skin once in awhile. To answer a frequent question that we receive, singers who have appeared nude on this site include Laurent Alvaro, Daniel Okulitch, Gunther Papendell, Troy Cook, Christopher Maltman and Omar Ebrahim, whose post is now our second most popular feature.
Omar Ebrahim; Challenging Gabriel Bermudez for our most popular post
Our other popular feature was of Ildebrando D'Arcangelo and Andrea Concetti frolicking around half-naked in Don Giovanni.
All of this foreplay leads us back to Bermudez, who has a bit of a cult following on this site. With his increased popularity, Bermudez has developed a better website, schedule and plenty of new videos to enjoy. The latest being this scene from Carmen.
Gabriel Bermúdez was born in Madrid. He began his vocal studies at the Escuela Superior de Canto in Madrid, under the direction of his mother, Carmen Rodríguez Aragón. He continued his vocal studies at Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía with the great mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza.
Gabriel Bermudez in La boheme
Bermudez first received major attention when he toured Europe with conductor William Christie and Les art florissants. He then went on to perform regularly with the opera houses in Zurich and Barcelona, as well as appearing in Madrid, Paris and Oviedo. His repertory includes many barihunk roles, including Orestes in Iphigenie en Tauride, Le Mari in Les mamelles de Tirisias, Borilee in Les Boreades, Guglielmo in Cos fan tutte and Papageno in the Magic Flute.
Inva Mula and Gabriel Bermúdez perform Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci" from the Liceu in Barcelona:
As much as he is regarding as a charismatic and intensely convincing performer on stage, he's becoming well regarded as a gifted lieder singer. In addition to the usual French and German repertory, Bermudez regularly includes Spanish language music on his programs by Rodrigo, de Falla, Abril, Toldra and Guridi.
Readers can't seem to get enough of Gabriel Bermudez
You can click HERE to wach the the famous nude scene from "Les Mamelles de Tirésias"
Bermudez is also featured on a number of DVDs and recordings, including Mozart's "La finta giardiniera," Mozart's "Die Zauberflote," Richard Strauss' "Ariade auf Naxos" and Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci."
His 2012 schedule includes a Schubert recital in Santiago on January 3, performances of the Merry Widow in Dortmund from January 5-February 9, an evening of German lieder on March 26 in Barcelona and a return to his signature role of Orestes in Iphigenie en Tauride in Leipzig in June.
The sexy barihunk Christopher Maltman in Juan (top)
First of all, let us apologize for not posting for a few days, but we decided to enjoy the holidays and to take a break from posting. During those days, we received a number of emails about our Christopher Maltman post and most wanted to know when his film "Juan" would be available in the United States. We've been trying to get that answer for months, but with no success.
Fortunately, one of our most loyal readers alerted us to this LINK where you can watch the movie online for free. It will direct you to a number of sites where you can chose options to stream the movie online or to download it. Some sites are free and some will charge you, so chose carefully.
Juan, which is an abbreviated and updated version of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is directed by Kasper Holten, who is the new Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Enjoy the movie and we'll return to our regular posting schedule tomorrow.
Also, thank you to everyone who purchased a Barihunks 2012 charity calendar. The proceeds will be going to the Portland Opera Studio and Seagle Music Colony in New York. Your support of our site is greatly appreciated. We pledge to continue to maintain a positive site in 2012 that promotes opera companies and singers. Any money that we make from calendars or other merchandise gets donated to support singers and singers. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
Christopher Maltman in Juan (top); Vienna's "From the House of the Dead" (bottom)
We've gone way too long without a post about Christopher Maltman, who tantalized us last year with his nude scene in Kasper Holten's movie "Juan." Unfortunately, the movie was never distributed widely in the United States and only played at a few art movie theaters. The DVD is only available in Region 2 format, but we promise to keep you informed when it is available worldwide.
Maltman is currently appearing in one of our favorite operas, Janacek's "From the House of the Dead." For those who haven't seen the opera it's non-stop feast of men from curtain to curtain. Maltman is singing the role of Šiškov at the Vienna State Opera. Šiškov brings the opera to a harrowing end when he sings a tale of murdering his love. There are four performances remaining between December 14-30. Click HERE for additional information or to purchase tickets.
Maltman talks about the role on his management website:
You’re rehearsing Janácek’s From the House of the Dead at the Vienna Staatsoper – an interesting piece to get your head around…Absolutely – but an amazing piece too. Its difficulty lies in the fact that there’s no real dramatic narrative; there isn’t a linear story to follow. But there are these four central monologues which are effectively studies in human psychology, each one becoming progressively more complicated.
Shower scene from Janacek's opera
Where do you fit in?My character Šiškov sings the final monologue. He’s a pretty ordinary, unassuming guy who through a series of awful events ends up doing something terrible, and my motto for the whole piece has been ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. It’s really about what people can do in very difficult circumstances and how those circumstances ultimately affect them. There’s this bunch of men trapped together in this prison; I feel the prison is a metaphor for those places in which people come express their emotions. It’s just a metaphor life.
Particularly when life means you’re thrown together with a large group of people away from home for a long and intense period of work – precisely the predicament of the modern opera singer…Very much so, and the similarities continue in that you’re with a bunch of people you don’t know very well. People very often take that opportunity to lay down their life story – to tell others about who they are and what they are, which is exactly what lies behind all the characters in From the House of the Dead. They’re people justifying why they are in the situation that they are in – why they did the things that they did.
And like them you’re on your own, too – away from your family…Well technology makes that far easier; I’ve just been able to talk to my two sons using Skype. But it’s always difficult and you have to balance the practicalities of having a career against the difficulties of having a family. It’s impossible to get it completely right, but there is nothing else that I could do to be at the level I hopefully sing and act at. Nor is there anything else I would want to do. But to go back to the prison idea, I am slightly trapped by my own profession!
Prison is exactly where your various vivid incarnations of Don Giovanni should probably be sent – you’re shortly to revive him in Berlin. How will that feel after your role in Kasper Holten’s explosive movie version?There are some constants that you take with you from production to production. Before I sang my very first big Don Giovanni I had lunch with Tom [Sir Thomas] Allen. He’s such a treasure trove. I asked him, look, is there any other advice you’d give me before playing the role? He told me, above all, to make Don Giovanni dangerous: he has to be dangerous, however that danger is achieved. There are sovereign requirements for Don Giovanni and that sense of danger about him is paramount I think.
And you’ll be re-united with Daniel Barenboim…He’s a very demanding man, a man with a lot of opinion and a man with a very clear vision of how things should be musically. But I’ve always found that kind of conductor much easier to work with than somebody who really lets you guess what it is that they want. For Daniel it’s all about the music – a desire to get the music right in his own head – and I can always live with that. He’s probably one of the greatest musical talents of the last 100 years – just a phenomenally, phenomenally gifted man. If you don’t listen to that kind of person, I think there’s something wrong.
Have you bought your 2012 Barihunks calendar? Buy one now before it's too late. Click 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.
Contact us at Barihunks@gmail.com
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.
Daniel Okulitch goes "The Full Okulitch" (Screenshot from Arte)
According to our Google Analytics, two of our most popular posts of all-time continue to be those of Gabriel Bermudez appearing nude in Poulenc's "Les mamelles de Tirésias" and Daniel Okultich appearing nude in Howard Shore's "The Fly." Until now, we've only had pictures and no video. But thanks to a European broadcast of the opera, we now have some video to share of the scene that prompted fellow barihunks Michael Mayes and Michael Todd Simpson on the Texapolitan Opera podcast to coin the phrase "The Full Okulitch" to describe a full-frontal nude scene in opera.
The Canadian barihunk can next be heard in recital at the Glenn Gould Studio on December 4th in Toronto. You can check out his profile on the CBC website where you can also listen to him discuss his status as a barihunk.
We also highly recommend that you add Okulitch's wonderful recital "The New American Art Song" to your CD collection. You can purchase it at the GPR Records website.
For the record, the only other barihunk to appear on this site other than Bermudez and Okulitch performing "The Full Okulitch" is Troy Cook. We should use this opportunity to point out that we only publish nudity if it was performed on stage. We have pictures of Leigh Melrose from "Riders to the Sea" and Laurent Alvaro from the French production of "The Fly," but felt the quality wasn't good enough to post. We also hear that there are photos of Eugene Brancoveanu from "Little Caesar," but we've never found them.
The last time we featured the 39-year-old French barihunk Laurent Alvaro he was nude in Howard Shore's operatic version of "The Fly" at the Théatre du Châtelet He's currently playing Thoas in "Iphigenie in Tauris" and Arcas in "Iphigenie in Aulis" at the Nederlandse Opera where he's still shirtless, but wearing pants.
Laurent Alvaro in the Iphigenie double-bill
One thing is certain, he's as sexy as ever. The double-bill of the underperformed Gluck operas runs through September 22. Click HERE for additional cast and performance information.
The amazing production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" directed by Roland Schwab at the Deutsche Oper Berlin is back for three performances on June 22, 26 & 29. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo is back in the title role, but David Bizic is replacing Alex Esposito, the reigning Leporello in the world. The Masetto is the polish barihunk Krzystof Szumanski, who also appeared naked as an apparition in Macbeth. A reader send us this photo, which is allegedly Szumanski.
Krzystof Szumanski nude?
Here is Ildebrando D'Arcangelo talking about singing Mozart from an RAI 3 radio broadcast:
Here are a few other photos from the Berlin production taken by Marcus Lieberenz.
Ramin Karimloo poses nude for Testicular Cancer Ad
We're going to continue the birthday celebrations, even if it's a long trip from Bach to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Also, posting Ramin Karimloo as the singer honoring Webber is a bit of a stretch, but one that we think is worth it (because it's an excuse to re-post his picture). He has been called a "high baritone" in the press, even though he sounds like a tenor to us. All of that aside, we would like to wish Sir Andrew all the best on his 63rd birthday.
Here is Ramin Karimloo singing in the new official video of "Til I Hear You Sing" from "Love Never Dies":
