Showing posts with label wigmore hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wigmore hall. Show all posts

Friday, September 13, 2019

Mikhail Timoshenko wins Wigmore Hall Song Competition

Elitsa Desseva and Mikhail Timoshenko at Wigmore Hall
25-year-old Russian bass-barihunk Mikhail Timoshenko won the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition, taking home the £10,000 prize money.

Timoshenko performed Holst's Ushas, Vaughan Williams' Let Beauty Awake, Copland's The Boatmen's Dance, Tchaikovsky's Podvig and Mahler's Ich hab' ein glühend Messer.

The £5,000 second prize place was awarded to 29-year-old British soprano Harriet Burns, while third place, with a prize of £2,500, went to British mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor. British tenor Kieran Carrel took home fourth place. Michael Pandya, the 25-year old British pianist who partnered Harriet Burns, won the £5,000 Pianist’s Prize.

The Wigmore finals. Timoshenko appears at 2:03:00

 Baritones have historically fared well at the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition. In 2017, three baritones swept the top honors, including Julien Van Mellaerts, John Brancy and Josh Quinn. In 2015, barihunks Samuel Hasselhorn and James Newby took Second and Third Prize respecively. In 2013, Gavan Ring walked home with the Second Place Prize. In 2011, Dominik Köninger launched his career by winning the top prize.

Timoshenko studied at the Mednogorsk Conservatoire and the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar. He has won numerous competitions including first prize at the Franz Schubert und die Musik der Moderne Competition in Graz, first prize at the Médoc International Singing Competition in Bordeaux, the Opera Prize by the Cercle Carpeaux, first prize at the Maria Callas International Competition and first prize at the Hugo Wolf Competition.

He joined the Paris Opera Academy in September 2015 and during the 2015-16 season he participated in several of the Academy’s concerts and recitals at the Bastille Amphitheatre. He sang in the French premiere of Joanna Lee’s Vol Retour and performed the role of Plutone in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo


Monday, July 22, 2019

Simon Keenlyside to appear at Wigmore Hall

Simon Keenlyside as Golaud
Photo: Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Michael Pöhn

Fan favorite barihunk Simon Keenlyside will appear at Wigmore Hall on July 26th joined by five British jazz musicians.

Keenlyside will sing selections from American jazz and light opera/musicals, including pieces by Kurt Weill, Emmerich Kálmán, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter and Billy Strayhorn. Tickets are available online.  

Earlier this year Keenlyside was knighted by HRH The Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace for his "services to music." He won a Grammy Award for his recording of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and in 2011 was named Musical America's Vocalist of the Year.

Simon Keenlyside as Golaud
Photo: Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Michael Pöhn
In 2016, he underwent thyroid surgery, which kept him offstage for 10 more months.

Upcoming opera performances include Rodrigo in Verdi's Don Carlo at the Vienna State Opera, Giorgio Germont in Verdi's La traviata at the Bavarian State Opera and Goulaud in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Hamburg State Opera.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Morgan Pearse to make solo Wigmore Hall debut

Morgan Pearse
Australian barihunk Morgan Pearse will make his Wigmore Hall solo debut on May 13th accompanied by Simon Lepper on the piano.

Pearse will perform six songs by Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss' Vier Lieder, Opus 27 and Samuel Barber's settings of James Joyce's poetry.

This isn't the first time that Pearse has performed at Wigmore Hall, but it does mark his solo recital debut. In 2013, he joined the Françoise-Green Piano Duo for Schumann's Liederkreis Op. 39 and Vaughan Williams Songs of Travel.

On April 21st, Pearse can be heard as Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Badisches Staatsoper in Karlsruhe. He then heads to Opera New Zealand for a run as Belcore in Donizetti's comic masterpiece The Elixir of Love

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Stéphane Degout and Cédric Tiberghien join forces at Wigmore Hall

Stéphane Degout and Cédric Tiberghien
Barihunk Stéphane Degout will join forces with equally sexy accompanist Cédric Tiberghien at Wigmore Hall on January 29th. The two will perform two of Ravel's epic song cycles, Chansons madécasses and the Histoires naturelles. They will also perform some of Poulenc's most notable songs, Le bestiaire, Montparnasse, Hyde Park, Calligrammes, Quatre poèmes de Guillaume, Apollinaire and Banalités.

The duo will be joined by Matteo Cesari on flute and Alexis Descharmes on cello for Chansons madécasses, a collection of three chansons written in 1925 and 1926 for voice, flute, cello and piano. They chansons were originally dedicated to the American musician and philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The composer combined twentieth-century musical experimentation and exoticism with the late nineteenth-century style characteristics present in the vocal elements and instrumentation.

Stéphane Degout performs Chansons madécasses with Alexis Descharmes on cello:

The 1906 song cycle Histoires naturelles is set to five poems by Jules Renard for voice and piano. The cycle was originally dedicated to the mezzo-soprano Jane Bathori, who gave the first performance, accompanied by Ravel at the piano, on January 12, 1907. The chansons are about a peacock, a cricket, a swan, a kingfisher and a guinea fowl. The unusual text of the pieces created a bit of a controversy at the opening performance.

Both song cycles are generally performed by either baritone or mezzo-soprano.

The French composer Francis Poulenc composed songs throughout his career, with his most prolific output in the 1930s and 1940s. He took most of his texts from his favorite poets, who included Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Éluard, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and Louise de Vilmorin. His songs have been praised for how the melodic line perfectly matches the text.

Monday, November 28, 2016

BARIHUNK CAST SWITCH: Barihunk James Newby replaces Jonathan McGovern as Mercurio

Barihunk James Newby (©Ben McKee Photography)
La Nuova Musica will be swapping barihunks in the role of Mercutio for their performance of Cavalli's La Calisto tonight at Wigmore Hall. James Newby will be filling in for Jonathan McGovern in a cast that also includes two of the sexiest countertenors in opera, Jake Arditti as Satirino and Tim Mead as Endomione. Bass-barihunk Edward Grint also appears as Silvano in a cast headed by early music specialist Lucy Crowe as Calisto. Tickets are available online.

Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, first performed in Venice in 1651, blends comedy and tragedy with music of sensuous beauty and irresistible charm.  The opera’s libretto is based on the ancient Greek myth of the nymph Callisto as related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.

At the age of 22, Newby was awarded Third Prize overall at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition in 2015 and won the Richard Tauber Prize for the  the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder. Previous winners of the prize include Jonathan Lemalu and Simon Keenlyside.

James Newby sings Finzi's "Come away, come away death":

In September, Newby performed on the last night of the BBC Proms in a concert that featured international operatic superstar Juan Diego Flórez.

In the summer of 2016, Newby joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and is currently  continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

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BARIHUNK CAST SWITCH: Barihunk James Newby replaces Jonathan McGovern as Mercurio

Barihunk James Newby (©Ben McKee Photography)
La Nuova Musica will be swapping barihunks in the role of Mercutio for their performance of Cavalli's La Calisto tonight at Wigmore Hall. James Newby will be filling in for Jonathan McGovern in a cast that also includes two of the sexiest countertenors in opera, Jake Arditti as Satirino and Tim Mead as Endomione. Bass-barihunk Edward Grint also appears as Silvano in a cast headed by early music specialist Lucy Crowe as Calisto. Tickets are available online.

Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, first performed in Venice in 1651, blends comedy and tragedy with music of sensuous beauty and irresistible charm.  The opera’s libretto is based on the ancient Greek myth of the nymph Callisto as related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.

At the age of 22, Newby was awarded Third Prize overall at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition in 2015 and won the Richard Tauber Prize for the  the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder. Previous winners of the prize include Jonathan Lemalu and Simon Keenlyside.

James Newby sings Finzi's "Come away, come away death":

In September, Newby performed on the last night of the BBC Proms in a concert that featured international operatic superstar Juan Diego Flórez.

In the summer of 2016, Newby joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and is currently  continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Only a month left to order your 2017 Barihunks in Bed Calendar. Enjoy opera's hottest men year around!

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BARIHUNK CAST SWITCH: Barihunk James Newby replaces Jonathan McGovern as Mercurio

Barihunk James Newby (©Ben McKee Photography)
La Nuova Musica will be swapping barihunks in the role of Mercutio for their performance of Cavalli's La Calisto tonight at Wigmore Hall. James Newby will be filling in for Jonathan McGovern in a cast that also includes two of the sexiest countertenors in opera, Jake Arditti as Satirino and Tim Mead as Endomione. Bass-barihunk Edward Grint also appears as Silvano in a cast headed by early music specialist Lucy Crowe as Calisto. Tickets are available online.

Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, first performed in Venice in 1651, blends comedy and tragedy with music of sensuous beauty and irresistible charm.  The opera’s libretto is based on the ancient Greek myth of the nymph Callisto as related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.

James Newby sings Finzi's "Come away, come away death":
<iframe width="433" height="233" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/87-FZfla9ak" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

At the age of 22, Newby was awarded Third Prize overall at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition in 2015 and won the Richard Tauber Prize for the  the best interpretation of Schubert Lieder. Previous winners of the prize include Jonathan Lemalu and Simon Keenlyside.

In September, Newby performed on the last night of the BBC Proms in a concert that featured international operatic superstar Juan Diego Flórez.

In the summer of 2016, Newby joined the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and is currently  continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Only a month left to order your 2017 Barihunks in Bed Calendar. Enjoy opera's hottest men year around!

="http://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=19452755"><img src="http://static.lulu.com/images/services/buy_now_buttons/en/gray.gif?20161116085207" border="0" alt="Support independent publishing: Buy this calendar on Lulu.">


Sunday, July 13, 2014

Morgan Pearse in recital at Wigmore Hall


Morgan Pearse
Australian barihunk Morgan Pearse will be performing at Wigmore Hall tonight with accompanist James Baillieu, as well as the Françoise-Green Piano Duo. Pearse and the Françoise-Green Piano Duo are 2013 winners of the Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition for singer and ensemble respectively.

Pearse will be performing Schumann's Liederkreis Op. 39 and Vaughan Williams Songs of Travel. Other music on the program includes the Schumann/Debussy Six studies in canon form Op. 56, Bach/Kurtág Chorales and a selection from György Kurtág's Játékok.

Pearse joins a long list of notable winners of the Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition, including Keith Lewis, Jean Rigby, Susan Bullock, Elizabeth Watts, Cheryl Barker, Gillian Keith and Lucy Crowe. Tickets for the July 14th concert are available online.

Last year, Morgan performed the title role in Britten's Owen Wingrave for Sydney Chamber Opera, and as bass soloist in Handel's Messiah for Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. Pearse is headed to the United States to continue his studies at the Houston Grand Opera’s Opera Studio, where he is slated to sing Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, Papageno in Mozart's Magic Flute, Yamadori  in Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Anthony in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. 

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Reader Submission: Martin Häßler



We're not sure what is going on with our reader submissions, but they seem to either be coming from Germany or recommending German singers (which is fine by us!). The latest is Martin Häßler who began is vocal training at the Hochschule für Musik Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in Leipzig, Germany. He is currently studying as a full scholarship awardee at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

He has done well at numerous singing competitions including the Thomas Quasthoff's Das Lied, International Song competition, taking first prize at the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang Berlin, and winning the Best Singer's Award at the Gerald Moore Competition London.



Martin Häßler, Bariton, 21 Jahre from Bundeswettbewerb Gesang Berlin on Vimeo.


The 24-year-old singer has been making his mark as a recitalist having performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, at Deutsche Oper Berlin accompanied by Philip Moll, at Schloss Herten with Graham Johnson, at the Oxford Lieder Festival, at LSO St. Luke's London, the Vienna Musikverein with Marek Ruszczynski, and at the Schubert Festival accompanied again by Graham Johnson.

On June 21, he'll be making his Wigmore Hall recital debut performing the works of Schubert, Wolf, Mussorgsky and Finzi. Tickets are available online.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Alex Esposito in London recital & Berlin "Don Giovanni"

Alex Esposito as Leporello in Berlin
We're unabashedly huge fans of Italian barihunk Alex Esposito, especially when singing Mozart. His calendar is full of Mozart again this year with his definitive Leporello in Don Giovanni up next at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Also in the cast is Seth Carico, one of our favorite American singers, who will be taking on Masetto. Performances are on January 17, 19, 24 and 30 and tickets are available online.

Other upcoming performances as Leporello include one at the Théâtre du capitole in Toulouse (with barihunks Christopher Maltman and Kostas Smoriginas alternating as Don Giovanni) opening on March 15. On May 3rd he'll reprise his Leporello at the Bayersche Staatsoper in Munich with Gerald Finley as Don Giovanni and Tareq Nazmi as Masetto. 

Seth Carico from our 2012 Barihunks calendar
Carico, who is now part of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper, can be seen this year as Biterolf in Wagner's Tannhäuser, the Sacristan in Puccini's Tosca, Count Ribbing in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, Panthée in Berlioz' Les Troyens, Count Ceprano in Verdi's Rigoletto, Astolfo in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia and Scriften in Dietsch's Das Geisterschiff.

Alex Esposito sings the catalogue aria from Don Giovanni:

Esposito will also be making his Rosenblatt Recitals debut at Wigmore Hall in London on February 5th. His program will include Leporello's catalogue aria, as well as "Vieni la mia vendetta" from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, "Vi ravviso, o luoghi ameni" from Bellini's La Sonnambula, "Cade dal ciglio il velo" from Rossini's Mosè in Egitto. He will also sing songs by Beethoven, Cesti, Carissimi and Tosti. Tickets are available on the Wigmore Hall website.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Dominik Köninger in innovative Magic Flute in Berlin

Dominik Köninger in pictures form the Komische Oper

We've become such huge fans of Dominik Köninger since he won the 2011 Wigmore Hall Song Competition. We we thrilled to see that he's Papageno in the new highly innovative production of Die Zauberflöte at the Komische Oper in Berlin.

The innovative Barrie Kosky production is in collaboration with the amazing British theater group “1927," whose humorous shows have thrilled audiences all over the world with their interaction between film animation and live-performing actors. The production is a mix of silent movies, Weimar era cabaret, David Lynch and Grimm's Fairy Tales.


Performances will run into February and tickets and additional performance information is available online.

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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Markus Werba sings Brahms

Markus Werba antiqued
Here are five Brahms songs performed by barihunk Markus Werba and pianist Gary Matthewman. This is from an October 2010 performance at Wigmore Hall in London that was broadcast on BBC 3.

The set includes:
Vor dem Fenster, Op.14'1
Ein Sonett, Op.14'4
Der Gang zum Liebchen, Op.48'1
Murrays Ermordung, Op.14'3
Alte Liebe, Op.72'1
O kühler Wald, Op.72'3
Unüberwindlich, Op.72'5



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Sunday, December 25, 2011

Christopher Maltman: COVERBOY

Christopher Maltman (photo by Pia Clodi)
We have a thousand reasons to love Christopher Maltman. We could start with his stunning lieder recitals and recordings, which currently include some of the best Schubert recordings on the market. Or we could love him for his dramatically intense portrayals on stage where he consistently taps into his emotional and psychological reservoirs to give us a complete portrayal of the character. Who could ever forget his Don Giovanni's at the Salzburg Festival or his portrayal of the same role in the movie Juan? We could love him for bringing elegance and grace to the world of opera both on stage or off stage. But Barihunks is equally about great musicianship and charismatic sexiness. Maltman has the latter in abundance.

Of course, there is nothing sexier than a sexy man who can carry it off without being pompous, arrogant or acting like a reject from Jersey Shore. Maltman wears his barihunk status as well as anyone in the business, along with guys like Erwin Schrott, Daniel Okulitch and Mariusz Kwiecien. One can always tell how comfortable a singer is in his skin by the way he answers a question about being a barihunk. We've seen singers make the ridiculous claim that they are completely unaware of their sex appeal or that they've never read articles (or looked at Barihunks) that discuss their sexiness. Of course, many of these same singers regularly send us photos and try desperately to get on the site!

That's why we loved this part of the profile on Maltman that appears in the Janauary 2012 edition of Opera Now magazine, where the British barihunk appears on the cover:

Opera needs its sexy poster boys and Maltman is claiming his billboard - not with Erwin Schrott-style Latin machismo or velvety Jonas Kaufmann looks, but a guy-impaling intensity that shatters surface veneer.

Does being considered a sex symbol bother him? 'No one's going to complain about being found desirable,' he laughs. 'And for Don Giovanni, it's crucial. He has to be dangerous, without that he's nothing. That's what I learnt when I was directed in the role by Sir Thomas Allen. He has to unbalance people, make them vulnerable and access their psyches at the same time. He's a chameleon, he changes from minute to minute but without personal contradiction; that's dangerous and sexy.'


Maltman will return to the role of Don Giovanni this summer with five performances at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Performances will run from June 24-July 6 and tickets and additional cast information can be found HERE. The all-star cast is laden with barihunks, including Erwin Schrott as Leporello and Alexander Tsymbalyuk as the Commendatore. Anna Netrebko is the Donna Anna and this will undoubtedly be one of the hottest tickets in all of opera this year.



Maltman begins 2012 on the concert stage with a recital centering around Ravel and his contemporaries at Wigmore Hall on January 15.  He then heads to San Francisco on January 19 for a recital at the Herbst Theater, which includes music by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Hahn and Faure. In February, he returns to the opera stage, singing Marcello at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.  The cast at the Liceu includes the most visited barihunk on our site, Gabriel Bermudez, who will be singing Schaunard. Perhaps the most unusual performance for Maltman this year is his assayal of Kurwenal in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in a concert version with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra on August 24.

Contact us at Barihunks@gmail.com
 

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Rescheduled Markus Werba Recital on BBC

Popular Austrian Barihunk Markus Werba

Brits were greatly disappointed last April when Iceland's ash cloud caused the cancellation of Austrian barihunk Markus Werba's Wigmore Hall BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert. The program of Schubert and Brahms lieder with accompanist Gary Matthewman finally was heard the other night and is now available for free on BBC radio for Werba fans across the globe to hear.

You can click HERE to listen to the recital, which starts at about the 3:00 mark.

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