Nicolas Courjal(Photo: Chorégies D'Orange Festival)
You can check out the video taped broadcast of Verdi's Aida from the historic Roman theater in Orange on culturebox with French bass-barihunk Nicolas Courjal as Ramfis.
The all-star cast was originally supposed to include Sondra Radvanovsky as Aida, but she withdrew due to fatigue and was replaced by the American soprano Elena O'Connor. The remainder of the cast includes the reigning Amneris of our time, Anita Rachvelishvili. as well as Marcelo Álvarez as Radamès and Quinn Kelsey as Amonasro.
Bass-barihunk Ildar Abdrazakov will open the 2018-19 La Scala opera season in Milan in the title role of Verdi's Attila. This will be the company's second opening night dedicated to the early works of the great Italian composer, following Giovanna d'Arco in 2015, starring Anna Netrebko and Carlos Álvarez. Attila will be conducted by Riccardo Chailly and directed by Davide Livermore in a new production.
The opera is based on the play Attila, King of the Huns by Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner, and it premiered on March 17, 1846 at the La Fenice in Venice. It is is the ninth of the Verdi's 28 operas, following Ernani and preceding Macbeth.
In 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven conceived the idea of writing an opera about Attila and approached August von Kotzebue to write the libretto. Obviously, it was never written, as Fidelio was his only full opera.
Ildar Abdrazakov and Quinn Kelsey sing the Attila/Ezio duet:
Verdi's opera is set in mid-5th century Rome and tells the story of Attila the Hun and his eventual downfall.
The opera includes a number of popular pieces for both baritones and basses, including Ezio's cabaletta "È gettata la mia sorte," which roused the Italian people around the the adoption of a liberal constitution by Ferdinand II. Atilla's best known aria is "Mentre gonfiarsi l'anima parea," where he awakes and tells Uldino of a dream in which an old man stopped him at the gates of Rome and warned him to turn back. The aria was made famous in recent times by the great American bass Samuel Ramey. The opera's prologue also includes one of the great duets for two low male voices, "Tardo per gli anni," where Ezio offers Attila the entire Roman empire if Italy can be left unharmed.
The opera opens on December 7th and additional information can be found online.
If you love great baritone singing, make sure to tune in your radio or go online to WFMT, Chicago's public radio station. The next three Saturday's will feature a bevvy of our favorite singers including three in this week's broadcast of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. The opera will feature the ageless barihunk Thomas Hampson in the title role alongside the riveting Ferruccio Furlanetto as Fiesco and rising superstar Quinn Kelsey as Paolo. Amelia will be sung by Krassimira Stoyanova and Adorno by Frank Lopardo.
Hampson is currently starring in Verdi's La traviata at the Wiener Staatsoper.
Craig Verm
The following week barihunk Craig Verm can be heard as Albert in Massenet's Werther, in a cast that includes tenor sensation Matthew Polenzani in the title role and Sophie Koch as Charlotte. Verm opens as Ned Keene in Britten's Peter Grimes at the Des Moines Metro Opera on June 22nd.
On June 1st, Italian sex symbol Ildebrando D'Arcangelo takes on the very un-barihunk title role in Donizetti's Don Pasquale opposite the Norina of Marlis Petersen. D'Arcangelo is currently performing the role of Selim in Rossini's comic masterpiece Il turco in Italia at Barcelona's beautiful Gran Theatre del Liceu.
Ildebrando D'Arcangelo
Future broadcasts include Richard Strauss' Elektra, Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel, Puccini's La boheme, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Verdi's Rigoletto and Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire with an all-star cast featuring barihunk Teddy Tahu Rhodes, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey and soprano Renée Fleming.
Erwin Schrott, Sherill Milnes, Dmitri Hvorstovsky & Ildar Abrazakov (Dario Acosta Photography/Richard Tucker Music Foundation)
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation gala on November 11th turned into a veritable Barihunks Gala, with three of the hottest an most popular barihunks performing: Erwin Schrott, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Ildar Abrazakov. The three singers even joined their legendary predecessor Sherill Milnes for a photo op.
The "Three Barihunks" (I see a DVD in their future), were featured along with many of today’s biggest names in opera, including fellow baritones Gerald Finley and Quinn Kelsey, mezzo-sopranos Olga Borodina and Jamie Barton, tenors Marcello Giordani and Stephen Costello under the baton of maestro Patrick Summers and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The gala also honored soprano Ailyn Pérez, the 2012 Richard Tucker Award-winner.
The concert will be broadcast in the United States on December 13th as part of the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center series on PBS. The telecast will include a feature on Ailyn Pérez and performances by the featured guest singers.
The "Three Barihunks" will also be featured prominently on the Metropolitan Opera stage this season. Ildar Abdrazakov is singing the title roles in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni,
Dmitri Hvorostovsky stars in the new production of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera and later in its revival of Verdi's Don Carlo, and Erwin Schrott will sing Leporello to Abdrazakov’s Don Giovanni and Dulcamara in Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore opposite his real-life partner, Anna Netrebko.
Buy you Barihunks Charity Calendar today, so that you can mark December 13th as the date of the Richard Tucker gala telecast. Click below:
The ageless American barihunk Thomas Hampson launched the 2012-13 season of the Orchestre de la Suisse
Romande singing music by the composer with whom he is perhaps most
closely associated: Gustav Mahler. The performance of "Das Lied von der Erde" is now available online and we figured it was a beautiful way to the start the week, so we posted it below.
Hampson and tenor Paul
Groves performed the piece under Music and Artistic director Neeme
Järvi, for two concerts in September in Geneva’s Victoria Hall.
This unique and transcendent “song-symphony,” featuring texts of
Chinese poetry translated into German, with additional texts by Mahler
himself, explores nothing less than the meaning of life, from the
innocent joys of youth to the inevitable parting from this world. True
to the work’s inspiration, Mahler infuses the orchestral sound with many
evocative Eastern touches.
Hampson recorded “Das Lied” in 1995 with
Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and again in
2007 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.
Hampson is currently performing the title role in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at the Lyric Opera of Chicago through November 9th. As and added treat, the Fiesco is the great Italian Verdi specialist Ferrucio Furlanetto and Paolo is the rising Verdi baritone star Quinn Kelsey. Tickets and additional cast information are available online.
Baritones and barihunks will play a major role at the 37th annual Richard Tucker Music Foundation gala on November 11th at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Barihunks Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Erwin Schrott and Ildar Abdrazakov will all have major roles at the gala. They will be joined by two other outstanding baritones - Gerald Finley and Quinn Kelsey. Other singers this year include mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina, tenor Marcello Giordani, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Stephen Costello, mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, tenor Marcello Giordani, soprano Ailyn Pérez and soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska.
Conductor Patrick Summers, Artistic and Music Director of Houston Grand
Opera, will be joined by members of the
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York Choral Society. They will be performing music by Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Massenet, Mascagni, Handel, and Wagner.
The gala will be recorded for delayed national broadcast in the United States as
part of PBS’s Emmy Award-winning “Live From Lincoln Center” series on
Thursday, December 13th. Hosted by five-time Tony Award-winning singer and
actress Audra McDonald, the telecast will feature mini-documentaries in
addition to the musical performance.
Tickets are available at the Richard Tucker Music Foundation website or at the Lincoln Center website.
We're huge fans of early Verdi operas at Barihunks, but we don't get nearly enough opportunities to post about them. Recently there have been a number of companies performing Attila, which often features multiple barihunks in the cast. Fortunately, the trend seems to be continuing in 2012.
In May, barihunk Ildar Abdrazakov will take on the title role in Rome in a production by Pier Luigi Pizzi and conducted by Riccardo Muti. Barihunk Luca Dall’Amico will perform the role of Leone. The San Francisco Opera performs it this summer with one of the greatest Attila's ever, Samuel Ramey, in the smaller role of Leone. The great baritone duet will be sung by Ferruccio Furlanetto and Quinn Kelsey, who portray Attila and Ezio respectively. In September, the opera opens in Santiago with barihunk Stefan Kocan in the title role.
One of the operas that rarely gets performed is La battaglia di Legnano, which has amazing moments of inspiration, Verdian patriotic fervor, a love triangle and some great baritone music (even though the best known piece is the tenor aria "La pia materna mano"). Verdi, in fact, was a baritone and loved writing great roles in that range.
We were thrilled when a reader sent us a video of barihunk Giorgio Caoduro singing the great baritone aria and cabaletta "Se al nuovo di pugnando...Ah scellerate alme d'inferno"" from a recent performance of La battaglia di Legnano at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste.
Caoduro can next be seen at the Opéra de Lyon where he is donning his matadors outfit for Escamillo. He can next be seen in the United States in March 2013 at the Washington National Opera singing Lescaut opposite the Manon Lescaut of Patricia Racette.
