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.
You will be able to watch the acclaimed 2010 production of Mozart's Don Giovanni from Glyndebourne online. It features three of the greatest low voices around today, Gerald Finley in the title role, Luca Pisaroni as Masetto and Guido Loconsolo as Masetto. Also not to be missed in this production is the Don Ottavio of William Burden and the Donna Anna of Kate Royal.
The video will go live HERE at 3pm London time (10 AM EST/7 AM PST) on July 6 and remain online until Sunday, July 13.
Critic Rupert Christiansen, writing about Gerald Finley as Don Giovanni and Luca
Pisaroni as Leporello, wrote: "Suavely ruthless, Finley was both steely
monster and molten charmer, singing with a firmness, clarity and stylistic
elegance that I can’t easily imagine surpassed. Pisaroni made a delightfully
goofy but treacherous Leporello, both his master’s alter ego and his rival."
Nathan Gunn as Yeshua (Jesus) and Sasha Cooke as Mary Magdalene
The San Francisco Opera under the inspired leadership of David Gockley keeps adding exciting new operas to the repertory. The latest is the world premiere of Mark Adamo's TheGospel of Mary Magadalene. (Their fall season also includes the world premiere of Tobias Picker's Dolores Claiborne starring Dolora Zajic). Adamo is the composer of two other hit operas, the hysterical Lysistrata and the classic tale Little Women, the latter which has become the most performed opera in America.
Supported by six years of his own research into ancient texts and modern biblical scholarship, Adamo has written a libretto for TheGospel of Mary Magadalene that scrutinizes Christian scripture and transforms it into an alternate history of sorts. Played out through human characters struggling with the role of sexuality in a patriarchal world, the opera reimagines a neglected, yet pivotal, female character who was traditionally (and erroneously) labeled as a prostitute but who, amidst the contentious religious politics of the time, was able to show Jesus the moral dignity of women.
The YouTube channel for San Francisco Classical Voice has posted a series of interviews with barihunk Nathan Gunn talking about the world premiere of Mark Adamo's Gospel of Mary Magadalene at San Francisco Opera.
Performances are running form June 19 to July 7 and tickets are available online.
Nathan Gunn on playing Jesus:
Nathan Gunn on working with his colleagues:
Nathan Gunn on working with composer Mark Adamo:
You can also listen to Cy Musiker from public radio station KQED talk about the The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Two of our most popular barihunks have upcoming recitals that are sure to be exciting nights in the theater.
Nathan Gunn will perform in concert as part of the Washington National Opera's "Celebrity Series" on Sunday, September 23 at 4 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Accompanied by the Washington National Opera Orchestra under the baton of Tony Award winner Ted Sperling, Gunn will perform selections from operas by Mozart, Rossini, and Bizet, plus songs by Sondheim and other Broadway composers.
The duo that started the barihunk/hunkentenor craze:
American tenor William Burden will join him for a few duets. Regular readers of the site and "Barihunk historians" will recall that the shirtless duo of Gunn and Burden is what started the whole barihunk craze when they performed "Iphigénie en Tauride" at Glimmerglass in 1997 and then appeared shirtless together in Philadelphia in 2004.
Jesse Blumberg: A one man barihunk craze
Baritone Jesse Blumberg joins the amazing accompanist Martin Katz in a return to the Kerrytown Concert House to perform a variety of repetoire The program includes Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wolf, Debussy (in honor of his 150th birthday) and Tom Cipullo's "Excelsior." Blumberg and Katz wowed audiences in 2009 at the Kerrytown Center with a double-bill of Schubert's "Die Schöne Müllerin" and "Die Winterreise."
Visit the Kerrytown Concert House website to purchase tickets.
Last week we featured an interview with David Krohn, who is playing Dr. Malatesta in the Seattle Opera Young Artist Program's production of Donizetti's "Don Pasquale." Krohn is alternating the role with fellow barihunk Joseph Lattanzi, who sings Dr. Malatesta in the April 1 and April 7 performances at the University of Washington's Meany Hall. Here is an interview with the rising young talent, who is headed off to San Francisco's prestigious Merola Opera Program this summer.
The interview was featured on the Seattle Opera blog. You can subscribe to the blog and get regular updates about all of the amazing opera in Seattle.
At Seattle Opera’s recent gala, you sang the Pearl Fishers duet with William Burden. What was that like? It was great! It was the first that I had ever done that Pearl Fishers duet, and it’s such a great piece of music. So I was really happy to get to sing it, and really happy to sing it with Bill, who has done that role all over the world. It was really daunting for me because I knew I had to try and get to his level really fast, but it was great experience and he’s such a nice guy and a really great mentor for a young singer. He’s really got everything it takes. He’s a great actor, a great singer, and a great person.
Young Artists Christopher Lade and Joseph Lattanzi with tenor William
Burden at Seattle Opera's 2012 Gala, "A Perfect Pairing." Photo by Alan
Alabastro
This opera is basically a cautionary tale warning against marriage (“Marriage is nothing but a heap of trouble,” everyone sings at the end). What do you think? Well, I think this opera is really about the wrong kind of marriage, in particular, and cautioning against marrying for the wrong reasons. Pasquale says at the beginning that he really just wants to marry someone to spite Ernesto, because Ernesto wants to marry Norina and he doesn’t approve. My character, Malatesta, shows Don Pasquale what a rash decision that was, and that he’s misguided. So I don’t know if it’s a cautionary tale against all marriage.
Have you sung any of the music in Don Pasquale prior to this production? Yes, I’ve sung the aria “Bella siccome,” which is one of the arias that people often give to young baritones because it’s really conducive to learning line and style and you can work on your Italian language through it. It’s one of those things that people hear a lot, so it’s hard to turn it into something really special and professional and get away from the amateur side of things. When you’re young and you work on an aria, things get ingrained. So after singing this for several years, I had a lot of habits I had to change and I had to modify the way that I was thinking about the role to fit in to how we’re doing it here in this production. I’ve also performed the duet with Norina and trio with Norina and Pasquale, both at the Chautauqua Institute a couple years ago.
Trailer for Seattle Opera YAP's Don Pasquale with barihunk David Krohn:
Like Albert in Werther, who you sang for us last fall, Malatesta is a bit of a two-faced character. Do you prefer these more dramatically complicated roles to a character who is simply good or bad? Yes, I think I do prefer them more. These types of roles have a lot of emotions to play and different ways to act around different people and things like that. But I have not met an opera role that has not been challenging yet. [Laughs] Even if they’re not two-faced or dramatically as interesting, nothing is really easy to play on stage, and there are always so many factors.
Have you played much comedy? How do the skills differ from those it takes to perform something like Carmen, which you sang on the mainstage last fall? I went to a performing arts high school outside of Atlanta where I grew up and we did a lot of musical theater and musical comedy there. And then in undergrad, I performed in Così fan tutte, and I also did Papageno, so those were comedic. Those roles do differ from the more dramatic roles—but my character in Carmen wasn’t so dramatic. Moralès gets to have fun, and that was a fun role for me. But, yes, the skill set for comedy is a little different. You have to have your wits about you and know what you’re going for but at the same time everything has to look very easy and spontaneous. When the performance looks planned, it’s not so funny for the audience anymore. You have to keep everything fresh while still hitting all your marks.
Lindsay Russell as "Sofronia" and Joseph Lattanzi as Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale Photo by Elise Bakketun
Are there any roles in particular that you really hope to get to perform someday? Oh, gosh, there are a lot of roles I really want to do. I’ve done a lot of Mozart (in school) and I was really lucky to have sung Don Giovanni. I’d really love to go back and do that again, because that a role that keeps evolving as you bring more experience to the table. I would also love to do Figaro in The Barber of Seville. That would be really fun down the line, maybe in a couple years.
What has been your favorite role you’ve sung so far in your career? I think I would say probably Don Giovanni. But this one, Dr. Malatesta, is shaping up to be one of my favorites because it’s really fun to sing. There are a lot of opportunities for showing off and it has legato singing, ensemble singing, and solo singing, so it’s really got everything. Don Giovanni was really fun, and so was Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, which I did at Oberlin when I was a student there. Don Giovanni was also through Oberlin, but as part of the Oberlin in Italy program.
How fun! Was that your first time in Italy? Yes, and I loved it. I have family lineage in Italy, so it was great to be there and also it was a really cool place to spend the summer. I went two summers ago and was there for maybe six or seven weeks for the Oberlin in Italy program, which was in Arezzo. Afterward I went to Paris for 10 days, as a vacation, because I’d always wanted to visit.
What’s next for you, once you leave Seattle? I’m going to be at the Merola Opera Program this summer with San Francisco Opera and I’m doing a role in Postcard from Morocco called The Man with the Shoe Sample Kit. It’s the baritone role in that opera, and it’s an ensemble piece for sure. Everyone has a lot to do and it has challenging music, by Dominick Argento. So I’m trying to learn that right now. It’s going to take a lot of time. Some of the more modern pieces take a little longer to get in your brain, but it’s in English, so that’s nice, and it’s just a cool piece. I think it’ll be exciting!
Gabriel Preisser, Liam Bonner, Mike Nyby, Andrew Wilkowske & Ben Wager
The Minnesota Opera is one of the gems in the landscape of American opera houses. It doesn't always get the national notoriety that it deserves, but within music circles it is known for consistently strong vocal performances and their religious commitment to young artists and living composers.
The Minnesota Opera has premiered Oliver Knussen's "Where the Wild Things Are," Libby Larsen's "Frankenstein," Ricky Ian Gordon's "The Grapes of Wrath," and Bernard Herrmann's sole opera "Wuthering Heights." They've also presented the American premieres of Jonathan Dove's Pinocchio, Poul Ruders' "The Handmaid's Tale," Dominick Argento's "Postcard from Morocco," Rossini's "Armida," Laurent Petitgirard's "The Elephant Man," and Reinhard Keiser's "The Fortunes of King Croesus."
The latest premiere from the Minnesota Opera New Works Initiative is Kevin Puts' "Silent Night," which is based on the screenplay for Joyeux Noël by Christian Carion. The opera recounts a miraculous moment of peace during one of the bloodiest wars in human history. On World War I’s western front, weapons are laid down when the Scottish, French and German officers defy their superiors and negotiate a Christmas Eve truce. Enemies become brothers as they come together to share Christmas and bury their dead. Tenor William Burden, who has a place in barihunk history for starring shirtless opposite of Nathan Gunn in the production that gave rise to the term, stars as the soldier whose voice inspired peace among adversaries – if only for a day.
Canadian Mike Nyby plays Scottish soldier William Dale
The opera contains more sexy men than a World Cup soccer championship. There are four barihunks who have appeared on this site before, including Mike Nyby, Gabriel Preisser, Ben Wager and Liam Bonner. The world premiere was on Saturday, November 12 and there are additional performances on November 15, 17, 19 and 20, 2011. Visit the Minnesota Opera website for additional performance and ticket information.
Contact us at Barihunks@gmail.com
Don't forget that you can support young artists like those performing at the Minnesota Opera by purchasing our 2012 Barihunks charity calendar. All proceeds go to benefit young artists. The calendar features the hottest singers from six countries. Click HERE to purchase your own calendar or make it the perfect holiday gift.
The New Orleans Opera production of The Pearl Fishers opens tonight at 8 PM with an additional performance on Sunday, January 30th at 2:30 PM. Barihunk Liam Bonner will sing the role of Zurga opposite hunkentenor William Burden. Visit their website for additional performance information.
Burden's portrayal of Nadir opposite barihunk Nathan Gunn was one of the early success stories on this site. The YouTube video below has over 55,000 hits, which is extraordinary for an opera clip. Our post still generates lots of traffic three years later.
William Burden & Nathan Gunn
We're not sure if the New Orleans production will have the same amount of skin as the famed Philadelphia performance, but we'll be keeping an eye out for photos.
The Seattle Opera Blog has an interview with barihunk Philip Cutlip, who is singing Enrico in their production of Lucia di Lammermoor. You can read the entire interview HERE. Performances run from October 16-30 with alternating casts.
Visit the Seattle Opera website for ticket and cast information.
Like many arts organizations, Opera Cleveland is facing challenging financial times. So we feel it is incumbent upon us to support their efforts, especially when it includes operas with barihunks and sexy marketing campaigns.
Of course, few operas scream for a hot ad campaign more than Bizet's Pearl Fishers and Opera Cleveland doesn't disappoint. They've also cast two barihunks: Michael Todd Simpson as Zurga and Ben Wager as Nourabad.
Performances will run from September 23 through September 26.
As an aside, it should be noted that the term "barihunk" came into common usage after tenor William Burden and barihunk Nathan Gunn performed the Pearl Fishers shirtless and forever changed opera. Here is a clip of the two men performing the famous duet in Philadelphia in 2004.
The seemingly ageless Nathan Gunn is taking on a new role next year. The barihunk will perform the role of Onegin in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" at the Cincinnati Opera in their upcoming season. Gunn will be joined by Tatiana Monogarova as Tatyana and William Burden as Lensky. Performances are July 14 and July 16, 2011.
Gunn will undoubtedly be compared to two of the greatest Onegin's off all-time, both of whom are still performing. Here are Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Marius Kwiecien:
It looks like the Philadelphia Phillies aren't the only thing that's hot in the City of Brotherly Love. The Opera Company of Philadelphia now has their own YouTube site and the most popular video is of barihunk Nathan Gunn and hunkentenor William Burden singing the famous duet from Pearl Fishers. For some reason the folks at Opera Phillie didn't add embedding codes so you'll have to click HERE to view the video. This photo is a hint of what's in store for you.
Barihunks waited eagerly for the production of Britten's "The Rape of Lucretia" to open at the Opera Company of Philadelphia. We even promoted it over a year ago when we first heard that Nathan Gunn would play the role of Tarquinius, a favorite at this site. Our excitement and anticipation increased when we learned that the role of Collatinus would be played by emerging barihunk Ben Wager. To top things off, the critical role of the Male Chorus was being played by the hunky William Burden, meaning that the Gunn/Burden partnership was returning that created one of the original barihunk/hunkentenor partnerships when they performed Pearl Fishers together topless.
