Three barihunks advance to Operalia finals; No sopranos!

Sean Michael Plumb, Simon Shibambu and Johannes Kammler

Three barihunks have made it to the finals of the Operalia competition in Lisbon, Portugal. South Afrian bass Simon Shibambu, American baritone Sean Michael Plumb and German baritone Johannes Kammler are among the final 12 singers who will compete on September 2nd.

In a bit of shocker, not a single soprano made it to finals. Readers of Barihunks may recall the "Baritone Blackout" in 2014 when not a single baritone made it to the finals despite some amazing low voice talent in the competition.

Bass Simon Shibambu graduated from the Royal College of Music, and in 2017 entered his second season as a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He next appears at the English National Opera in Richard Strauss' Salome, which opens on September 28.

Johannes Kammler is a former Samling Artist and Britten-Pears Young Artist and a member of the Opera Studio at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He next appears in Trier in the title role of Mendelssohn's Elias on October 3. He then heads to the Canadian Opera Company to sing Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte.

Johannes Kammler sings Pierrot's Lied:

Sean Michael Plumb was graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and made his national television debut in the HBO documentary “Renée Fleming: A YoungArts MasterClass.” He is currently a member of the Bayerische Staatsoper ensemble. He next appears as Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte with the Kentucky Opera opening on September 21.

The other finalists are the brilliant American mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey, Russian tenor Migran Agadzhanyan, Candian mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb, Canadian/Italian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, Portuguese tenor Luis Gomes, Chinese tenor Long Long, Belarus tenor Pavel Petrov, Swiss/French mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti and Russian tenor Arseny Yakovlev.

The competition's five Zarzuela finalists are mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, tenor Luis Gomes, tenor Pavel Petrov, Brazilian mezzo-soprano Josy Santos and Colombian/American soprano Vanessa Vasquez.

The September 2nd finals will be streamed on Medici.TV and Facebook.

Sean Michael Plumb steps in as Schaunard

Sean Michael Plumb

American barihunk Sean Michael Plumb will step in for Andrea Borghini in today's family performance of Puccini's La bohème at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The cast also includes Lavente Molnár as Marcello, Bálint Szabó as Colline, Guangun Yu as Mimi, Golda Schultz as Musetta and Bryan Hymel as Rodolfo.

He joined the company's ensemble in 2016, when he sang the Porter in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Servitore and Sicario in Verdi's Macbeth, Moralèe in Bizet's Carmen, Olav Bjaaland in Srnka's South Pole, Harlekin in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos , Yamadori in Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Dandini in Rossini's La Cenerentola. 

This season, he sings Moralèe in Bizet's Carmen, which opens on February 16th, followed by two performance in March: Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte and Dandini in Rossini's La Cenerentola.

He is schedule for two upcoming performances in the United States this year, singing Melot in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde with the Cleveland Orchestra and Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Sean Michael Plumb's debuts new website; Returns to Bayerische Staatsoper

Sean Michael Plumb (Photo Dario Acosta)

American barihunk Sean Michael Plumb has a new website and management page with Étude Arts. His website includes his new bio and schedule. He will be returning to the ensemble of the Bayerische Staatsoper for the 2017-18 season to sing Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Dandini in La cenerentola, and Prosdocimo in Il turco in Italia

He was a member of the Salzburg Festival’s Young Singers Project in 2016 and has been a young artist at The Glimmerglass Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Aspen Music Festival.

We featured Plumb back in 2012 when he made his national television debut in the HBO documentary “Renée Fleming: A YoungArts MasterClass.” He was honored by President Obama as a United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts at a ceremony at The White House and has garnered a multitude of awards for his singing including the Grand Prize of the 2016 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions

Highlights of Sean's 2017-18 season include the following performances:

Il Trittico (Marco) - Bayerische Staatsoper, December 2017 - January 2018, July 2018

Così fan tutte (Guglielmo) - Bayerische Staatsoper, March 2018

La cenerentola (Dandini) - Bayerische Staatsoper, March 2018

Liederabend - Munich, April 2018

Tristan und Isolde (Melot) - The Cleveland Orchestra, April 2018

Die Zauberflöte (Papageno) - Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, June 2018

American barihunk Sean Michael Plumb joins Bavarian State Opera

Sean Michael Plumb (Karli Cadel Photography)

American barihunk Sean Michael Plumb has joined the ensemble at the Bavarian State Opera, where he will kick off his fest contract as the Porter in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Fellow barihunk Alexander Tsymbalyuk will also perform in the production as the Police Inspector and the Old Convict. 

This season Sean Michael Plumb will go on to perform a variety of roles with the company, including Servitore and Sicario in Verdi's Macbeth opposite fellow barihunk Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Morales in Bizet's Carmen, Olav Bjaaland in Srnka's South Pole, Harlekin in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos with Karita Mattila in the title role, Yamadori in Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Dandini in Rossini's La Cenerentola.

Sean Michael Plumb sings Rene Orth's Empty the House:

Last summer, he was part of the Salzburg Festival’s Young Singers Project. Prior to that, he racked up a number of impressive wins at vocal competitions, including the Grand Prize at the 2016 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Top Prize at the 2016 Gerda Lissner Foundation International Vocal Competition, a 2016 Shoshana Foundation Grant, the 2015 Sullivan Foundation Award from The Sullivan Foundation, Top Prize at the 2015 Opera Index Competition, a 2015 Sara Tucker Grant from The Richard Tucker Foundation, First Prize at the 2015 Gerda Lissner Liederkranz Competition, and the 2015 Theodor Uppman Prize from the George London Foundation.

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Our 2017 Barihunks in Bed calendar is now on sale. Order your copy by clicking on the LULU button. 

Malte Roesner

Half of Met Audition Finalist are Low Male Voices!

Bass-Barihunks Christian Pursell (left) and André Courville (right)

Twenty-three young opera singers who have won regional auditions around the United States arrived at the Met this week to compete in the semi-final round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. The closed semi-final competition, held on the Met stage before a panel of judges, will determine the select group of finalists who will advance to the final round of the competition. Eleven of the 23 semi-finalists are baritones, bass-baritones or basses!

Brian Vu sings Pierrot's Tanzlied:

This year’s regional winners were chosen from nearly 1,500 singers who participated in the auditions held in 42 districts and 13 regions throughout the United States and Canada. The singers arrived yesterday for music preparations for the semi-finals competition on Sunday, March 6.

The 2016 semi-finalists include 23 aspiring opera singers representing various regions around the United States and Canada. This year, there are eight sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, one tenor, one countertenor, seven baritones, two bass baritones, and two basses semi-finalists competing on Sunday, March 6.

Barihunks Sean Michael Plumb (left), Brian Vu (center) and Theo Hoffman (right)

The baritones include Jeff Byrnes (Great Lakes Region: Baton Rouge, LA); Alex DeSocio (Midwest Region: Wichita, KS); Hunter Enoch (Mid-South Region: Paris, TN); Theo Hoffman (Eastern Region: New York, NY); Jin Sol (Eastern Region: South Korea, currently living in Fort Lee, NJ); Sean Michael Plumb, (Gulf Coast Region: Philadelphia, PA); and Brian Vu (Southeast Region: Los Angeles, CA).

 Theo Hoffman sings three songs by Jonathan Dove:

Bass-baritone semi-finalists are André Courville (Great Lakes Region: Cecilia, LA) and Christian Pursell (Central Region: Santa Cruz, CA).

Two basses round out the list: Daniel Mirosław (Eastern Region: Warsaw, Poland, currently living in New York, NY) and Anthony Robin Schneider (Middle Atlantic Region: Auckland, New Zealand, currently living in Philadelphia, PA).

The remaining semi-finalists include sopranos Tracy Cantin, Yelena Dyachek, Alison King, Lauren Feider, Felicia Moore, Kerriann Otaño, Christine Price and Ann Toomey; mezzo-sopranos Emily D’Angelo and Samantha Gossard; tenor Jonas Hacker and countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński

The BASS-barihunks Anthony Schneider (left) and Daniel Mirosław (right)

The winners of this event will go on to sing in the Grand Finals Concert on Sunday, March 13 at 3 p.m. hosted by past National Council Auditions winner Deborah Voigt. Each finalist will perform two arias with conductor Antony Walker and the Met Orchestra. Bass-baritone Eric Owens, a past National Council Auditions winner and National Advisor for the Metropolitan Opera National Council, will be the guest artist and perform during the judges’ deliberations once the auditions part of the program is over.

 Daniel Mirosław sings the Catalog Aria from Don Giovanni:

At the end of the concert, winners will be announced, each of whom will receive an individual cash prize of $15,000 and career-making exposure. The Met Auditions were crucial in introducing many of today’s best-known stars, such as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Patricia Racette, Deborah Voigt, Nathan Gunn, and Lawrence Brownlee.

Following the semi-finals, those contestants who advance will have a week of preparation with Met musical and dramatic coaches to prepare for the Grand Finals Concert on March 13th. Tickets for the Grand Finals Concert may be purchased at the Met Box Office, by phone at 212-362-6000, or online at www.metopera.org.

Baritones (secret) winners at Gerda Lissner Competition

Sean Michael Plumb, Josh Quinn, Anthony Schneider and Erik Larson.

What if you held a song competition and no one knew about it? That seems to be the case with this year's Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition. They held a competition last week and haven't posted the results, nor sent out a press release. We have an inquiry pending with them to find out the results and will update this post, as over $200,000 in prizes were handed out for lied, opera and a special Wagner division.

Fortunately, thanks to social media we've learned that barihunk Sean Michael Plumb won one of the top prizes, Josh Quinn took Third Prize and Anthony Schneider and Erik Larson both won Encouragement Awards.

Last year baritones won a number of prizes, including Reginald Smith Jr. who won the Gerda Lissner Foundation Top Prize and first prize honorees Michael Adams, Jared Bybee, Patrick Guetti, Sol Jin and John Viscardi.

ORDER YOUR BARIHUNKS CALENDAR TODAY AND SUPPORT THE CREATION OF A FOUNDATION SUPPORTING LOW VOICES AND RELATED PROJECTS!

 

Introducing Bastian Thomas Kohl & Étude Arts

Soloman Howard, Bastian Thomas Kohl and Sean Michael Plumb (L-R)

We'd like to introduce readers to the German bass-barihunk Bastian Thomas Kohl, as well as his management agency, Étude Arts.

The latter might seem unusual, but it's not often that we see a new agency, especially one that has two barihunks who we've featured, Soloman Howard and Sean Michael Plumb, and one that we somehow missed, Bastian Thomas Kohl. The agency was founded by IMG Artists Senior Vice President Bill Palant. He seems well-suited for the job, having worked in the business for 19 years after a career with the Metropolitan Opera’s Rehearsal Department and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood.  Most importantly, he has a degree in psychology from Oberlin College which will serve his well in this endeavor!

Bastian Thomas Kohl, began his musical career at the age of four and received his formal training at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig and in Vienna at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst.

His international career commenced at the age of nineteen as a member of the Opernchor Leipzig appearing frequently with Gewandhausorchester under the direction of Riccardo Chailly.  He joined the Opernhaus Zürich in the 2014-15 season as a member of the International Opera Studio and has been heard in productions of Lohengrin, Robin Hood, Fidelio and Fälle,  Upcoming performances in Zürich include roles in Iris Ter Schiphorst's children's opera Die Gänsemagd, Richard Strauss' Elektra, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame.

Upcoming performances for Soloman Howard include Banco in Verdi's Macbeth at Kentucky Opera, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. in Philip Glass' Appomattox at Washington National Opera, Prince Gremin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at North Carolina Opera and Fafner in Wagner's Das Rheingold at Washington National Opera.

Upcoming performances for Sean Michael Plumb include Marcello in Puccini's La bohème at Curtis Opera Theater, Olav Bjaaland in Miroslav Srnka's South Pole with fellow barihunk Thomas Hampson at the Bavarian State Opera and Der Graf in Richard Strauss' Capriccio at Opera Philadelphia.

Young Barihunk featured on HBO with Renee Fleming

Set you DVRs for 6 PM on May 28th for "Renee Fleming: A YoungArts MasterClass" on HBO. The legendary soprano will work with four aspiring opera-singers on developing their voices and their careers. 

The students in this program are awardees of the Miami-based arts organization, YoungArts. Each year, YoungArts selects 150 high school students from an applicant pool of over 7,000.  The highly-popular first season of the Master Class Series featured tenor Placido Domingo, Julian Schnabel, Jacques d'Amboise, Frank Gehry, Olafur Eliasson, Edward Albee, Bill T. Jones, Liv Ullmann, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

The four singers who were selected to work with Fleming are Aaron Casey, Crystal Vanrell, Samantha Hankey and an emerging barihunk, Sean Michael Plumb. The 20-year-old Los Angeles native studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with Marlena Malas and Mikael Eliasen. He also holds a fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he has studied for the last two summers. 

He has performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Broad Stage, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and as a United States Presidential Scholar, the Kennedy Center. Additionally, Sean performed at the 2010 Grammy Week Salute to Placido Domingo with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra. He has won many competitions including the Classical Singer Magazine 2009 High School Competition, the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Awards, and the top prize (Gold) at the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts’ YoungArts Week. At Curtis Sean has appeared in Apollo and Daphne (Apollo), Faust (Wagner), La Tragedie de Carmen (Lilas Pastilla), Il Signor Brushchino (Il Comissario), and The Cunning Little Vixen (Grasshopper). 

A 2010 graduate of Loyola High School of Los Angeles, Sean also plays piano and enjoys swimming and watching college basketball. Check out his website for more information.

You can follow the YoungArts Master Class program on Facebook.

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com