Bass-barihunk calendar model Aaron Sørensen will show off his amazing low F as Sparafucile in Verdi's Rigoletto at the Charlottesville Opera (formerly Ash Lawn Opera). Sørensen recently performed the role to great acclaim with the Mississippi Opera. The Charlottesville cast will include Eglise Gutiérrez as Gilda, Matthew Vickers as the Duke of Mantua and Hyung Yun as the ill-fated father Rigoletto.
The opera opens on July 9th at the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre at Virginia Tech University and then heads to the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia for performances on July 14, 16 and 19. Tickets are available online.
Barihunk calendar model Aaron Sorensen appeared on Midday Mississippi on WLBT Channel 3 in Jackson along with soprano Rachel Arky. The duo were were pitching their "one night only" performance of Verdi's Rigoletto in which they perform the brother and sister duo of Sparafucile and Maddalena.
The rest of the cast includes barihunk Corey Crider, Hanna Brammer as Gilda, Cody Laun as the Duke of Mantua and Taylor Hightower as Monterone.
There is a single performance on April 22 at the Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson at 7:30 PM. You won't want to miss Sørensen's glorious Low F! Tickets are available online.
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."
