Ryan Kuster in Weber rarity "Euryanthe"

Ryan Kuster as Escamillo at Virginia Opera

Bard SummerScape 2014 is presenting Carl Maria von Weber's rarely performed Euryanthe with barihunk Ryan Kuster as Lysiart. There will be five performances running from July 25-August 3. Revivals of the complete opera are rare, especially in the United States, where it has not been seen since the Metropolitan Opera’s 1914 staging 100 years ago. A check on Opera Critic showed the last fully staged performance at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2010. Oper Frankfurt will present the opera next April with Erika Sunnegardh, Eric Cutler, Heidi Melton and James Rutherford.   

Ryan Kuster, who was part of the prestigious Merola Opera Program and Adler Fellows in San Francisco, has become an audience favorite on the West Coast.  In 2012, he made his symphonic debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic singing the role of Masetto in their highly acclaimed production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, directed by Christopher Alden and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. At the San Francisco Opera he has performed the Mandarin in Puccini's Turandot, Astolfo in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, Masetto in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen (for families), Count Ceprano in Verdi's Rigoletto, the 4th Noble in Wagner's Lohengrin,  Angelotti in Puccini's Tosca.

The rest of the cast, which will be directed by Kevin Newbury,  includes Ellie Dehn as Euryanthe, William Burden as her fiancé Adolar, Wendy Bryn Harmer as Euryanthe’s rival Eglantine and Peter Volpe as King Ludwig. Performances will be at the beautiful Frank Gehry-designed Sosnoff Theater at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.T Tickets are available online.

Weber's greatest single success was probably his 1821 opera Der Freischütz. With his next opera, Weber wanted to break new ground. So in Euryanthe the spoken dialogue disappeared, replaced by continuous music. However, even the composer's great music couldn't save the opera from a ridiculous libretto, which has attributed to its relative obscurity. Perhaps the most well-known music from the opera is its overture, which is often performed by orchestras. It uses material from the opera, including Adolar's rebuttal of Lysiart and his second act romance.

Big talent, big boy, big voice, big feet - Big ol' Jonathan Beyer

Big Boy Beyer in Britten

We truly enjoyed many of the emails regarding our "Todd Boyce's really big..." post. Needless to say, some bordered on the completely inappropriate and we now know more about some singers than we probably need to know (real and imagined, we suspect).


We once did a post about the tallest barihunks, which generated a lot of interest. We even did a sarcastic post called "BariChunks," which some chubby chasers took total delight in and it generated an onslaught of pictures being mailed to us that would never appear on this site. One thing is clear, "BIG" is popular. Big voices, big men, big talents, big personalities and big bulges.


A reader reminded us that one of opera's "big boys," as she put it, will be performing tonight at Carnegie Hall. She describes him as "about 6'5" with really big feet." A Washington Post review described his voice as "big" and "virile." Big seems to be the descriptive word to define this talented young singer.


One thing that we know about him is that he's made a big splash in the opera world. As we previously posted, he's been cleaning up at singing competitions, especially with the aria "News has a Kind of Mystery" from John Adams' "Nixon in China."


Beyer will be joining soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer and accompanist Kristin Okerlund tonight for music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Griffes, Wagner  and Bohm. The concert begins at 5:30 PM and you can get additional information on the Carnegie Hall website.