Lucas Meachem to participate in gala for the San Antonio Opera
Earlier this year, we were saddened to report the very sudden demise of the San Antonio Opera. Just as we were preparing a post about their upcoming Don Giovanni, we learned that the Board of Directors had shut the doors due to a lack of cash flow.
We are pleased to announce that representatives for the company have announced that they have raised $500,000 to reopen the doors, scheduled a gala fundraising concert on May 23, 2013 and will announce a new 2014 season shortly.
The $500,000 raised to date includes $228,000 from the city
of San Antonio, contributions from the
nine Opera Theater San Antonio board members and challenge grants from
the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation and the Tobin Endowment.
The gala concert will include barihunk Lucas Meachem along with Patricia Racette, Susannah Biller, Dolora Zajick, Daniela Mack, Jay Hunter Morris, Alex Shrader and Eric Owens
Alessio Arduini
Thanks to one of our loyal readers, we have learned of a new barihunk singing at the Vienna State Opera. Alessio Arduini, a native of Desenzano del Garda, Italy has joined the roster of the company and is currently singing Masetto opposite fellow barihunk Peter Mattei in Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Upcoming performances include Schaunard in Puccini's La boheme at Covent Garden in December and Silvano in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at Milan's La scala in July 2013.
There are three performance left of Don Giovanni on October 14, 17 and 20, with additional performances in March 2013. Visit the Vienna State Opera website for additional information.
You can watch Arduini as Schaunard opposite Piotr Beczala as Rodolfo and Anna Netrebko as Mimi in a performance from the Salzburg below (complete opera):
Mariusz Kwiecien & Ryan Kuster starring in exciting new Don Giovanni in L.A.
It's no secret that Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is one of our favorite operas at Barihunks. With the potential to have four barihunks in a cast and a plot full of sex and sexual innuendo, productions of Don Giovanni often provide a feast for the eyes and ears.
We were thrilled when we learned that conducting wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel was performing the opera at Disney Hall in May 2012. The production team might be one of the greatest ever assembled for an opera, headed by legendary architect Frank Gehry, who will design the sets (and who designed Diseny Hall). The costumes for the production will be made by designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who created the costumes for the movie "Black Swan." The performance will be directed by Christopher Alden, who had previously had great success with the opera. In the title role will be barihunk Mariusz Kwiecien and the Masetto will be Ryan Kuster. Hunkentenor fans will be thrilled to learn that the Don Ottavio will be Pavol Breslik.
We also have some bad news concerning Don Giovanni. The San Antonio Opera is the latest classical music organization to suffer financial hardship. The current cash crunch has forced the company to cancel the February performances of the Mozart classic and close their offices. A brief announcement from the company stated:
The San Antonio Opera Board of Directors announced today that it has cancelled the February production of "Don Giovanni".
San Antonio Opera will use the hiatus to attempt to address the organization's financial obligations with creditors as well as plan for the next phase in the future of the regional opera company.
There are some roles that we suspect will never make it onto Barihunks, like Falstaff. It's just hard to imagine anyone making that particular role sexy. We have our abundance of Escamillos, Zurgas, Billy Budds and Don Giovannis, so we're always looking for the unusual. We were toying with posting Simon Keenlyside's Rigoletto at Welsh National Opera, but we realized that even with one of our favorite barihunks, it was a stretch.
However, we did find this clip of Matthew Treviño as Sparafucile from the same opera. We were blown away by how searingly sexy he is as the evil assasin in this clip from Act 3. The performance appears to be from a recent production at the San Antonio Opera. We're fairly certain that he's the first Sparafucile to appear on this site.
Treviño now heads to Austin Lyric Opera to perform in Michael Nyman's chamber opera "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat."
