Canadian bass-barihunk Daniel Okulitch is returning to both his native country and a familiar role this month. He'll be reprising his highly-acclaimed interpretation of accused killer Joseph De Rocher in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking at the Vancouver Opera from April 29-May 7.
He has performed the role with the Fort Worth Opera and in the Canadian premiere at the Calgary Opera. In this production, he'll be joined by J'Nai Bridges as Sister Helen Prejean, Karen Slack as Sister Rose, Judith Forst as Mrs. Patrick De Rocher and Thomas Goerz as Owen Hart. Tickets are available online.
The opera is based on the bestselling memoir by Sister Helen Prejean and chronicles the story of a convicted Louisiana murderer who is befriended by a Catholic nun seeking to understand the nature of divine forgiveness. Prejean's memoir was the basis for the award-winning 1995 film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn
Ramin Karimloo will be performing Che in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita from April 30-May 8th at the Vancouver Opera. He'll be joined by Caroline Bowman as Evita and John Cudia and Perón in a full-scale production of the musical.
Last Fall, Karimloo was performing Jean Valjean in Les Misérables
eight times a week at the Imperial Theatre in New York City and was buffing up at the Columbus Circle
Equinox. That's when these photos were taken by Matthew Murphy and his assistant Mitch Dean.
Ramin Karimloo sings Bring Him Home from Les Misérables:
Karimloo, who is classically trained, has spent most of his career singing Broadway musicals. He considers himself a "high baritone" and reviewers have commented that he's a lyric baritone with an easy reach into the tenor range. The closet Karimloo has gotten to an opera performance is a few gigs on stage singing Gilbert & Sullivan. He remains one of the most popular singers on our site based on reader views.
Tickets for Evita at the Vancouver Opera are available online.
The 100th birthday celebration of Benjamin Britten continues with a production of one of his comic masterpieces in Canada.
Aaron Durand, who last
appeared on the Vancouver Opera stage as Sciarrone in Tosca, will be singing the role of Sid in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring with the company. Durand enrolled at the Victoria Conservatory of Music at age 19 before transferring to the University of Brtish Columbia where he graduated from in April 2013. Durand was awarded the Yulanda M. Farris Young Artist award, which granted him a year's contract with the Vancouver Opera. He is also the winner of the Boxer Career Development Grant from Vancouver Opera and the Ben Hoeppner Scholarship from the University of Brtish Columbia.
The opera opens on November 30 with four performances running through December 8th. The Vancouver Opera had updated their production to the 1950s. Tickets are available online.
Albert Herring was composed between 1946 and 1947. The libretto, by Eric Crozier, was based on the Guy de Maupassant short story, Le Rosier de Madame Husson.
It premiered at the Glyndebourne Festival in June 1947 and was
intensely disliked by the owner and founder of the festival, who is
reported to have greeted audiences with the words "this isn't our kind
of thing, you know." Almost 40 years later, the festival's 1985
production of Albert Herring was one of the most successful the opera has ever had.
If Peter Grimes showed the tragic aspects of life, Albert Herring
showed its comic side. In it, Britten parodies moral hypocrisy, village
fêtes, mayors, vicars, schoolmarms and policemen. Its successful
translation in several European countries has broadened the opera's
appeal.
[Nikki Einfeld and Daniel Okulitch; Photo by Tim Matheson, Vancouver Opera]
The Vancouver Sun singled out barihunk Daniel Okulitch's performance in the Vancouver Opera's current production of the "Marriage of Figaro." Here's what they had to say:
Okulitch’s Figaro is the stuff of greatness. He is still young enough to be completely right for the role, and his loose-limbed geniality makes him the irresistible focus of attention every second he’s on stage. When all Figaro’s brash confidence finally sours late in the day, Okulitch musters the dramatic reserve to pull it off with real psychological insight.
We recently featured emerging barihunk Jose Rubio on our site. His hometown newspaper in Vancover, Washington, The Columbian, wrote a feature on Rubio and mentioned his appearance on the site.
Read the entire article HERE. Here's the highlight:
The 5-foot-10, 170-pounder also is part of a new generation of opera singers, [coach Robert] Ainsley said, redefining the look of the profession, casting off the stigma of "big, fat, old warbley people."
Rubio recently was listed on a fan Web site, barihunks.blogspot.com, that focuses on this nation's "bari-hunks." The singer, who ran varsity cross country in high school, features yoga classes, bike riding and other physical fitness training in his weekly routine, which includes numerous classes in languages, history, movement, acting, dancing and stage fighting. He rarely sings for more than an hour a day, and often not at full volume to save his voice for the performances.
The 26-year-old hunk is singing in Portland Opera's "La Boheme" through October 3rd. You can get ticket information HERE. By the way, Portland's "La Boheme" also features one of this site's most popular barihunks, Michael Todd Simpson.
I've been keeping an eye on Michael Nyby, hoping that he'll break out soon. He's currently performing in Donizetti's Elixir of Love with the Santa Fe Opera Spring Tour.
Here's a video of him singing "Deh, vieni alla finestra" from Mozart's Don Giovanni in Czechoslovakia. He also performs frequently with the Vancouver Opera and here is an interview with him from their blog (http://vancouveropera.blogspot.com/):
Guilty musical pleasure? I love singing Karaoke.
Where do you love to sing? I often sing when mountain biking or snowboarding.
What is your idea of earthly happiness? If only I knew.
To what faults do you feel most indulgent? I have a serious professional hockey addiction.
Who are your favourite heroes/heroines of fiction? Macbeth, Jean Valjean, Odysseus, and Batman
Who are your favourite characters in history? I'd have to go with Cleopatra - her life reads like an epic novel.
Who are your favourite heroes/heroines in real life? Leonard Warren, Barack Obama, and Wayne Gretzky
Who is your favourite author? I've gone through many, but I always seem to come back to Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins.
Your favourite musician? My wife.
Your favourite composer? That's a tie between Mozart, Verdi and Curtis Mayfield. Only a true genius could write Die Zauberflote, Otello, or the Soundrack to Superfly.
What quality do you most admire in a person? A sense of humour.
Your favourite virtue? The ability to accept and make light of one's faults.
Your favourite occupation? If I weren't an opera singer, I would wan to be Indiana Jones, so I suppose the anser is a totally-awesome-archaeologist-adverturer.
What did you want to be as a child? Indiana Jones. I still do!
Your most marked characteristic? It's hard for me to say, but my wife says the first thing she notices about me was my eyebrows. They're very pronounced.
What do you most value in your friends? Constancy. I have very few friends whom I can contact after years apart and it is like no time at all has passed.
For what would you like to be remembered? I'd be happy just being remembered.
What natural gift would you most like to possess? The Force.
What is your motto? "Come on, it'll be fun!" Which could also qualify for my famous last words.
[Top photo Okulitch in The Fly; center photo, Okulitch in Dead man Walking; Bottom photo by David Gribbin of David Adam Moore]
If you don't have summer travel plans yet, you might want to consider booking a flight to Milan between June 6-17. The Teatro alla Scala will be performing Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream with two barihunks, David Adam Moore and Daniel Okulitch. The rest of the cast is pretty impressive as well, with countertenor David Daniels, sopranos Rosemary Joshua and Erin Wall, and Andrew Davis in the pit.
For those of you who missed it the first time, I'm reposting the picture of Daniel Okultich from The Fly. It was the most viewed picture on this site over the Christmas holidays, so most of you were being naughty, not nice.
Daniel Okulitch is the next Nathan Gunn/Teddy Tahu Rhodes, which is a good thing. Directors are realizing that they have great voices and great bodies and are taking advantage of it.
It's not often that you see a Figaro with his shirt wide open. It adds an element to the opera that one doesn't get in most productions. Kudos to Dallas Opera for this production, which also features barihunk Michael Todd Simpson as Count Almaviva. Now that's a double beef whopper.
Okulitch is staking out firm ground as one of the leading barihunks of our generation, performing nude in The Fly, stripped down to his scivvies in Dead Man Walking and now performing with his shirt wide open in Le Nozze di Figaro. In addition to his pulchitrudinous form, he also is a very gifted singer as one can see from the video (courtesy of www.dallasopera.org).
