Robin Adams in first German production of Eötvös' Angels in America

Robin Adams as Prior Walter in Angels in America

British barihunk Robin Adams is the latest singer to portray the role of Prior Walter in Péter Eötvös' operatic adaptation of Angels in America. The show opened on March 10th at the Theater Freiburg and runs through June 3rd. This is the first performance of the opera in Germany.

The opera was originally written for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris where it premiered in 2004. The cast included barihunks Daniel Belcher and Omar Ebrahim, as well as Barbara Hendricks, Roberta Alexander, Derek Lee Ragin and and Topi Lehtipuu.  

Robin Adams as Prior Walter in Angels in America

Angels in America received its West Coast premiere in 2013 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with barihunk David Adam Moore and Nikolas Nackley as Joe. Moore has also sung the role at the Fort Worth Opera Festival and the Opera Wrocławsa in Poland. Barihunk Andrew Garland sang Prior Walter at the New York City Opera last year to great acclaim, in a cast that included Michael Weyandt as Joe.

Additional cast information and tickets are available online.

Barihunk trio in NY premiere of operatic Angels in America

Wayne Tigges, Aaron Blake, Andrew Garland and Michael Weyandt (l-r)

The new New York City Opera closes its season with the New York Premiere of Péter Eötvös's Angels in America, distilling the two-night, seven-hour play into a single, powerful evening of opera. The cast includes the barihunk trio of Andrew Garland as Prior Walter, Michael Weyandt as Joe, Wayne Tigges as Roy Cohn and hunkentenor Aaron Blake as Louis. The opera comes with a warning of "strong sexual content, nudity, mature themes and language."

The opera was originally written for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris where it premiered in 2004. The cast included barihunks Daniel Belcher and Omar Ebrahim, as well as Barbara Hendricks, Roberta Alexander, Derek Lee Ragin and and Topi Lehtipuu.  

Angels in America received its West Coast premiere in 2013 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with barihunk David Adam Moore and Nikolas Nackley as Joe. Moore has also sung the role at the Fort Worth Opera Festival and the Opera Wrocławsa in Poland.

The opera is based on Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name and will be sung in English with supertitles. There will be four performances running from June 10-16 and additional cast information and tickets are available online.

Operatic Angels in America premieres in Poland

Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk and David Adam Moore

Barihunks David Adam Moore and Craig Verm created a sensation in 2008 at the Fort Worth Opera in Péter Eötvös' Angels in America as Prior Walter and Joe Pitt respectively. David Adam Moore is back singing the piece with Opera Wrocławsa with Maurice Lenard as Joe Pitt. Moore has also performed the piece with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra to great acclaim. This is the opera's first production in Poland.

The opera will be back in the U.S. from February 19-22 at the Boston University Theatre with a different cast.

Tenor Gyula Rab and baritones David Adam Moore and Maurice Lenhard

Lenhard, a native of Gelnhausen, Germany,  is new to this site. He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik and the Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main. He originally studied piano and was good enough to take top prizes at the Gründauer Kultursommers and the Willy-Bissing Klavierwettbewerbs Hanau competitions. Like Moore, he is a proponent of contemporary music and performed in the 2013 premiere of the chamber opera Out at SEA with the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation and the Ulysses Network in Budapest.

You can catch Moore again in the United States at the Utah Opera in March when he takes on Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

Guillaume Andrieux appearing in Eötvös opera

Guillaume Andrieux in Philip Glass' Les Enfants Terribles

French barihunk Guillaume Andrieux, who we introduced to readers in a performance of Benoît Mernier’s La Dispute, will perform Roger in Peter Eötvös' opera Le Balcon from May 20-24 at the Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris.

Le Balcon, Peter Eötvös' second opera, is based on Jean Genet’s play of the same name. He is best known in the United States for his opera Angels in America, which starred barihunk Thomas Meglioranza in New York and David Adam Moore in Fort Worth and Los Angeles.

Albane Carrère & Guillaume Andrieux

The composer wrote of the piece, "With Genet, one can take it literally; a revolution rages in the streets, the Palais Royal is blown up, while the customers in the specially equipped salons of the brothel 'Le Balcon' are dressed with the properties and costumes of major social positions: They want to become a bishop, judge, general, even if for only half an hour. The girls help them, and Madame collects the money for this dubious pleasure. The piece is a wonderful, constantly sparkling role play, a theatre within the theatre...My music sometimes 'is also dressed' with 'French-style manners,' but most important to me was to let the marvelously frivolous, poetic language of Genet remain understandable. I therefore used many grotesque, comedy-like cabaret-music elements, and sometimes my music is close to the French chanson, with Fréhel, Jacques Brel, Yves Montand, Leo Ferré being my models."

In December, Andrieux can be seen as Raoul de Gardefeu in Offenbach's La Vie parisienne at Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg.

David Adam Moore gets devilish for new opera

David Adam Moore in Paradise Reloaded

David Adam Moore, who created a sensation in Peter Eötvös’ version of Angels in America, will make his debut at the Neue Oper Wien playing Lucifer in the world premiere of the composer’s latest work Paradise Reloaded (Lilith).

Paradise Reloaded is based on an adaptation by the young German playwright Albert Ostermaier. Eötvös based his opera on the original story, The Devil’s Tragedy, where Lucifer is the main protagonist. In Paradise Reloaded places the spotlight on Lilith and examines the hypothetical question of what might have happened if our Bible-based culture regarded Adam’s first wife Lilith, not Eve, as the original mother of mankind.

There are four performances running from tonight through November 1st. Click HERE for tickets. It will be reprised in Budapest in January at the Bartók Béla National Concert Hall with Holger Falk as Lucifer. We featured Falk on Barihunks in 2009 after Parterre Box ran a piece on him.

You can enjoy David Adam Moore all year in our new Barihunks Charity Calendar. It's also a great way to support young artists. This year, we're letting readers tell us who should get the money. Post your suggestions on our Facebook timeline or tweet us using #Barihunks2014.

Erik Anstine spotted skiing in the Alps in a Barihunk tee shirt

Eric Anstine

Check out who was seen in the Swiss Alps sporting his Barihunk tee shirt! None other that former Los Angeles Opera Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program and Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program participant Erik Anstine. The bass-barihunk in now on the roster of the Opernhaus Zürich where he was cast this season as  Bartolo in Le nozze di Figaro, Biterolf in Tannhäuser, the Second Solier in Salome, Anfisa in the premiere of Eötvös’ Drei Schwestern, and Hausknecht/Wächter in a new production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtensk.

He opens tomorrow as one of the Knights of the Holy Grail in Wagner's Parsifal in a cast that includes Angela Denoke as Kundry, Evgeny Nikitin as Amfortas, Stuart Skelton as Parsifal and Jan-Hendrik Rootering as Gurnemanz. Performances run through April 1st and tickets are available online.

Eric Anstine

In the upcoming season, he can be seen as Masetto in Zurich's new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni with fellow barihunk Peter Mattei in the title role, Ruben Drole as Leporello, and hunkentenor Pavol Breslik as Don Ottavio. He'll also be joining two other barihunks in a new production of Gounod's Faust. Anstine will be singing the role of Wagner alongside Elliot Madore and Kyle Ketelson. We can't wait to get a backstage picture of that trio!

Next season he can also be seen alongside the great mezzo Cecilia Bartoli in a Christof Loy production of Handel's Alcina.  Check out the entire 2013/2014 season at the Opernhaus Zürich website.

Elliot Madore makes U.K. debut at Glyndebourne

Elliot Madore (Photo: Kristin Hoebermann)

Out in the Sussex countryside away from the commotion of the Summer Olympics, the Glyndebourne festival is about to present it's sixth and final production of the season. On August 4th, the company will open the Ravel double-bill of L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges. Ravel’s two one-act operas will reunite director Laurent Pelly and conductor Kazushi Ono, who made their Glyndebourne debuts in 2008 with Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.

Canadian barihunk Elliot Madore will make his U.K. and Glyndebourne debut as Ramiro in L’heure espagnole and as The Cat/Grandfather Clock in L’enfant et les sortilèges'. There are nine performances running through August 25th and the opera will be screened in theatres throughout the U.K. on Sunday, August 19th for those who didn't get their tuxedos pressed in time.

 The 1987 production from Glyndebourne with barihunk Francois LeRoux:

The former Lindemann Young Artist participant has also joined the ensemble of Opernhaus Zürich for the 2012-13 season. The company has cast him in a new production of Peter Eötvös’s 'Three Sisters', and revivals of 'Pagliacci' (Silvio), 'Un ballo in maschera' (Silvano), and 'La scala di seta' (Germano).

Readers of this site will recall that Madore created a sensation when he stepped in for Daniel Okulitch as Don Giovanni with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. He also appeared as Lysander at The Met in their Baroque pastiche The Enchanged Island.

Other operas that are still running at Glyndebourne include La bohème, Le nozze di Figaro and Purcell's The Fairy Queen. Visit their website for tickets and additional performance information.

Barihunks On The Air - David Adam Moore & Randal Turner

One of the great things about most of our barihunks is that they are not only lovely to look at, but there are a number who are highly compelling artists. David Adam Moore and Randal Turner are not only two of the most riveting performers on stage, but they are also amazing singers. You can now hear both of them online in their most recent performances.

Moore has shown his ability to bring great depth to music ranging from the baroque to today's most modern compositions. Great examples of this are his critically acclaimed performances as Aeneas in Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" and his riveting performance of David T. Little's "Soldier Songs."

[David Adam Moore in Soldier Songs]


Moore just reprised the lead role of Prior Walter in Peter Eötvös' "Angels in America" to great critical acclaim at the Barbican Center in London with the BBC Symphony. The Sunday Times of London raved about the U.K. premiere of the opera. You can haer it on the BBC until April 14th by clicking HERE. Due to "adult language" there is a box that you'll have to click to attest that you're over the age of eighteen. Although the opera contains a lot of recitative, Eötvös has created a condensed and highly effective opera based on Tony Kushner's award-winning play.

[Randal Turner as Don Giovanni]


Randal Turner is known for his warm, mellifluous baritone as well as his ease on stage. Trained as a dancer, he brings great physicality to all of his roles. The early buzz on his Don Giovanni in Detroit is that it's going to be a sexually charged performance. For those who can't make the performance, they will still have the opportunity to hear it broadcast live on April 14th on Detroit's WRCJ 90.9. The internet stream will be available HERE at 7:30 PM EST.

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