Andrè Schuen making major debuts in 2015

Andrè Schuen

 Andrè Schuen who lit up our pages with his shirtless pictures from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore from Graz is making some major debuts in 2015. But first he kicks off the New Year with a concert with the Berlin Philharmonic that includes Handel's Dixit Dominus, Zelenka's Te Deum and Bach's Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied.

On February 16th, he makes his debut as Figaro at the Theater an der Wien in Giovanni Paisiello's rarely performed version of Il Barbiere di Siviglia under early music specialist René Jacobs. The opera was adapted from Beaumarchais' play Le Barbier de Séville by librettist Giuseppe Petrosellini and premiered in Saint Petersburg in 1782. The plot of the Paisiello opera and the Rossini version closely resemble each other, with the main difference being Petrosellini's libretto putting greater emphasis on the love story and less on the comic aspects.

Performances run through February 27th and tickets are available online. On March 6, the work will be performed at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels.

Fans in the U.K. will finally have the chance to see Schuen live when he makes his Wigmore Hall debut on March 22nd. Joined by pianist Daniel Heide, he'll perform Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 24, Frank Martin’s Jedermann and three Harfenspieler songs from Wolf’s Goethe-Lieder. Tickets are on sale now online.  

He currently has no U.S. engagements on his calendar.  

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Martin Achrainer awarded first "Richard Tauber Medal"

Martin Achrainer receiving the first Richard Tauber Award

The Friends of the Linz State Theatre has awarded the first "Richard Tauber Medal" to barihunk Martin Achrainer. Achrainer has been a regular member of the theater since the 2006/2007 season and has been a favorite of both audiences and management for his beautiful singing and incredible acting skills.

Regular readers of this site know that we are unabashed and enthusiastic fans of the Tyrolian singer who premiered Philip Glass's Kepler at the theatre and then reprised it in New York. He has also performed Glass' Orphée and Spuren der Verirrten.

In addition to Glass, he has been a passionate exponent of new music, including Henze, Ligeti, Kelterborn and Schwertsik. In addition to contemporary music, he has excelled in musical theater, baroque music, church music, as well as the Weill, Bernstein, Puccini, Wagner, Donizetti and especially Mozart.

Achrainer, who studied at the Max Reinhardt Seminar was heavily influenced by two of the greatest singers of the recent past, Brigitte Fassbaender and Robert Holl.

Martin Achrainer

He can currently be seen in Linz performing the roles of Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen and Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. In July, he'll don Papageno's feathers again at Opern Klosterneuburg.

The award in named after the popular Linz-born tenor Richard Tauber (1891-1948), who many regard as one of the greatest exponents of operetta and opera in the 20th century. Tauber often wore a monocle and black top hat and came to epitomize Viennese charm.

Martin Achrainer (shirtless) in another Philip Glass premiere

Martin Achrainer in Spuren der Verirrten

Tyrolian barihunk Martin Achrainer is making quite a name for himself as an exponent of new works by American minimalist composer Philip Glass. An alert reader spotted these pictures from Glass' new German language opera Spuren der Verirrten (“Footprints of the Lost”)," which is based on the play by Peter Handke. We've previously seen Achrainer in Glass' Orphée and in the world premiere of Kepler.

Much of this is attributable to the fact that Achrainer is in the ensemble at the Landestheater Linz, where the music director and principal conductor is long-time Philip Glass collaborator and champion Dennis Russell Davies.  Glass wrote “Spuren der Verirrten” for the opening of the new Musiktheater am Volksgarten, a state-of-the-art opera house that Davies was instrumental in getting built.

Martin Achrainer in Spuren der Verirrten

Although the world premiere of Spuren der Verirrten was in April of this year, the opera is being perfromed again beginning on November 9 and running into January 2014. Tickets are available online. 

Achrainer's character is called "F' and the rest of the cast includes A, B, C, D...you get the picture. Although the opera has many of the typical characteristics of the composer's works, including repetitiveness and minimalism, he has added alphorns and zithers to give it an Austrian flavor. The text is typical Glass, as well, with singers often repeating the question “Where are we?”

The joke at the opera house has been that this work is “Two Notes, One Opera.”