Merola Concerts Tonight and Sunday (and Birthday Greetings to Jordan Shanahan)

Phillipe Sly & Mark Diamond

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area don't miss tonight's Schwabacher Summer Concert featuring the latest class of participants. The concert will feature works by great  Italian composers, as well as a little Tchaikovsky. The concert will feature scenes from "Don Carlo," "I Capuleti e i Montecchi " "Lucia di Lammermoor," "Rigoletto" and "Eugene Onegin." The scenes concert will be directed by renowned stage director Peter Kazaras, who currently serves as Seattle Opera's Artistic Advisor and Principal Artistic Instructor of the Young Artist Development Program, and was recently appointed Director of Opera and Music Theater at UCLA.

Two Merola participants are of particular interest to us this year, as they have already created a buzz in the opera world for their amazing singing talent and barihunk good looks: Phillipe Sly and Mark Diamond. Both singers have also won major vocal competitions, with Diamond taking first place at the Eleanor McCollum Competition at the Houston Grand Opera and Sly winning the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions Competition.

Mark Diamond

Diamond has already been scooped up by the Houston Grand Opera and he'll be joining their esteemed young artist program after Merola. Houston has engaged him to perform Fiorello in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Marchese d’Obigny in La Traviata. He will be studying the roles of Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia, and Rodrigue in Don Carlos. You can hear his sound clips HERE.

Phillipe Sly in performance

We've featured Phillip Sly prominently on this site since he first came to our attention. You can hear his sound clips HERE. A little trivia about Sly: he originally started out as a countertenor (like fellow barihunk Zachary Gordin). Here is Sly singing Schubert's Der Erlkönig, which we've previously posted, but we can't get enough of.



Both singers will appear in the Merola performances of Rossini's "Barber of Seville" this year. Diamond as Figaro and Sly as Bartolo. Performance are on August 4, 5, 6 and 7 and tickets can be purchased HERE. For those who can't make tonight's concert, there will be a FREE version of the concert at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Park on Sunday, July 24th at 2 PM.

Birthday boy: Jordan Shanahan

We'd also like to wish Jordan Shanahan a HAPPY BIRTHDAY today. Shanahan and his wife soprano Luna recently won the Barihunks "Favorite Opera Couple" poll. We've been trying to find a video of the popular couple singing together and we promise to post one when it becomes available.

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IT'S OFFICIAL: THE GOLDEN AGE OF BARITONES IS NOW

Clockwise bottom left: Joseph Barron, Ryan Green, Joseph Lim and Phillipe Sly

As if we needed further evidence that the "Golden Age of Baritones" is officially upon us, four of the five winners of the 2011 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions were baritones. We've been featuring Phillipe Sly since we first heard him sing and believe that he's destined for a major career. Sly was joined by baritones Ryan Speedo Green, Joseph Lim,  Joseph Barron and soprano Michelle Johnson as winners of the competition. We offer our hearty and well-deserved congratulations to each of the singers. You can read their bios HERE.

Mariusz Kwiecien in Met Brochure

A quick look at who the real superstars are on stage and in marketing campaigns reveals that baritones are dominating the opera stage like at no other time in history. Rene Pape, Bryn Terfel, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Paulo Szot, Christopher Maltman, Simon Keenlyside, Nathan Gunn, Erwin Schrott, Peter Mattei and Mariusz Kwiecien are some of the dominating figures in opera. A decade ago almost every marketing piece for an opera company featured female singers, with Renee Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu, Natalie Dessay and Cecilia Bartoli leading the way. Even the major "crossover" stars are now baritones, particularly Nathan Gunn, Rod Gilfry and Paulo Szot, who have all made their mark singing the music of Broadway.

Even the media savvy tenor Placido Domingo is getting in on the action, singing the baritone roles Simon Boccanegra, Rigoletto and Iphigenie en Tauride. 

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