We caught some Twitter messages going back and forth between friends a few weeks ago. One friend suggested that the other should be on Barihunks. The other replied that "this accolade could complete me as a human being!"
The latter response came from 20-year-old baritone James Newby, who is currently in his second year of study at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London. He currently studies under Alison Wells and previously studied with Robert Dean and Omar Ebrahim (who has been on this site in all his glory). We're happy to help him in his quest to become a complete human being.
Newby is due to represent Trinity Laban in the junior Kathleen Ferrier award in October after receiving the second highest mark in the year for his end of year recital.
Previous operatic experience includes Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute with Suffolk opera, Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen with Puzzle piece opera, Gugliemo in scenes from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte with G and T opera and covering Apollo in Trinity Laban's production of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. Oratorio performaces include Bach's "St John Passion" and Haydn's "Nelson Mass" with the Old Royal Naval college chapel choir, Britten's "Rejoice in the Lamb" with the Rodolfus choir and Stainer's "Crucifixion" with the Stamford endowed schools chapel choir.
We have to confess that we were also intrigued that he's been playing rugby since he was fourteen.
James is also a member of TV star Gareth Malone's new choir, whose innovative new album will be released in November.
Gareth Malone's choir performs their rendition of Guillotine by Death Grips
One thing we love about the internet is that we can track which posts are of the most interest to our readers. Clearly, our readers like a little beefcake, as the posts with the most skin seem to consistently generate the most traffic. (Who said opera lovers were stuffy?). Our teaser post featuring Anders Froehlich in Fabrizio Carlone's Bonjour M. Gaugin at the West Edge Opera outside of San Francisco was no exception. It rivaled some of our top posts featuring Daniel Okulitch, Omar Ebrahim, Nathan Gunn, Michael Mayes, Gabriel Bermudez and our latest sensation snowboarder/barihunk Christiaan Smith Kotlarek.
Anders Froehlich and soprano Shawnette Sulker
We attended opening night, and the build up to the opera was worth the hype. West Edge Opera, which used to be Berkeley Opera, prides itself on "pushing the envelope" under General Director Mark Streshinsky, who also directed Gouguin. Their recent production of Monteverdi's L’incoronazione di Poppea with a fiendishly sexy Ryan Belongie in the countertenor role of Ottone was a huge critical success.
Anders Froehlich in Bonjour M. Gouguin
Streshinsky took a chance with Carlone's Bonjour M. Gaugin, in that the composer was virtually unknown and the story mixes French and English, dance and opera, and video projection with stage action. Froehlich was asked to perform extensive dance moves by choreographer Yannis Adoniou, which is usually a red flag in opera. But the 31-year-old baritone and amateur rock climber has extensive dance training and he moves as effortlessly as the other dancers. Even the music, which was scored for low instruments and no violins, had more hints of Debussy than modernism.
Anders Froehlich and soprano Shawnette Sulker
Next up for the company, is Benjamin Britten's Turn of the Screw, which runs from July 20-28. There are no baritones in the cast, so mark your calendars now. More information about West Edge Opera is available on their website.
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.
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.
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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.
