Theo Hoffman and Johnny Herford(photo: Maximilian Führig)
Barihunks Theo Hoffman and Johnny Herford will share the lead role in composer Philip Venables and librettist Ted Huffman's new opera Denis & Katya. The opera will premiere on September 18 with Opera Philadelphia as part of their Festival O19.
The true story follows 15-year-olds Denis Muravyov and Katya Vlasova, who livestreamed their final hours on multiple social media platforms after creating a real-time voyeuristic spectacle and leaving behind a trail of devastating footage of their drinking, smoking, cuddling, and crying as they prepared to die.
The couple had been in an armed standoff with Russian Special Forces when they decided to broadcast themselves live on social media, creating a spectacle of real-time voyeurism. The couple became known as the Romeo and Juliet of internet clickbait.
Denis & Katya is scored for four cellos and features a double cast. Theo Hoffman will be joined by mezzo-soprano Siena Licht Miller for opening night, with additional performances on September 21, 22, 25 and 29. The second cast features Johnny Herford andEmily Edmonds for performances on September 21, 23 and 28. Tickets and additional information is available online. West Coast fans of Theo Hoffman can catch him this Fall as Papageno in Barrie Kosky's highly acclaimed production of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Los Angeles Opera. Information is available online.
Davóne Tines will star in the world premiere of five-time Grammy winner Terence
Blanchard and filmmaker Kasi Lemmons’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” at the Opera
Theater of St. Louis this summer. The opera is based on the memoir of New York Times
columnist and political commentator Charles Blow. This is the composer's second work for the company, following his highly successful "Champion," which premiered in 2013 and was subsequently performed at Opera Parallèle and the Washington National Opera.
The libretto for Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a soul-baring story of Blow's experiences growing up in Gibsland,
Louisiana, including violence and the sexual abuse he endured from a relative.
The opera will also feature rising stars Julia Bullock in three roles and Karen Slack as Blow's mother. All three artists are making their Opera
Theater of St. Louis mainstage debuts.
“Fire Shut Up in My Bones” will premiere on June 15, 2019 at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and run for six performances. Additional information is available online.
Davóne Tines also recently premiered The Black Clown, with text that the singer adapted from Langston Hughes. The piece deals a
Black man’s resilience against a legacy of oppression.
Jonathan Estabrooks, who appeared in the very first Barihunks calendar, will be appearing in the world premiere of Edward Thomas and Joseph Masteroff's opera Anna Christie. The Juilliard-trained singer and producer, who continues to look better with each passing year, will take on the role of Mat Burke, the stoker who falls in love with the title character.
The opera will be presented by Encompass New Opera Theatre in New York on October 4 and will run through October 21, 2018 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center.
The cast includes also includes Frank Basile as Chris Christopherson, Melanie Long as Anna Christie, Joy Hermalyn as Marthy Owen and Mike Pirozzi as Larry the Bartender.
Anna Christie, based on Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning play explores the lost relationship of a woman and her father, and the sailor she falls in love with. The sea is a powerful symbol in the play and O'Neill having lived by the docks in New York City's waterfront, was acquainted with the sailors, booze, saloons and night life that he wrote about with such passion and authenticity. Abandoned by her father when she was five years old, Anna suffered a life of hardship and carries a dark secret from her past. An emotionally charged reunion with her father, a captain of a coal barge, intensifies when a merchant sailor is pulled from the cold, dark waters of the Atlantic on a foggy night. When the fog clears, Anna, the sailor and her father are caught in a riveting struggle between love and the sea, changing their lives forever.
The play made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921 and was made into a 1930 Hollywood film starring Greta Garbo in her first talking picture.
Tickets and additional information is available online.
Nicolas Simeha in Seven Stones(Photo: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence)
French barihunk Nicolas Simeha will be one of four singers in the world premiere of Ondřej Adámek's "Seven Stones." The a capella piece is written for four solo singers and twelve choristers. Including today, the work will have five performances through July 14 at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence's Jeu de Paume Theatre.
Ondřej Adámek is considered one of the leading representatives of the European new wave of composers. He based the libretto on a work by Icelandic poet Sjón, who is a frequent collaborator with Björk.
The opera’s seven tableaux evoke seven stones, seven scenes that connect the Biblical era to modern times. The condensed, interdisciplinary work proposes a new performance canvas in which the singers are invited to double up as instrumentalists, dancers and actors.
The opera's website description of the story is as follows:
"A mineralogist-collector who has got lost down a snowy lane remembers: many years earlier, he had gone in search of the first stone – the one that was almost used to stone to death the adulterous woman who was saved by Christ. During this seven-year long journey that takes him from Buenos Aires to Paris and from Japan to Iceland, the collector discovered many other stones... And the end of his journey leads to the conclusion of his quest – and to tragedy."
Tickets and additional cast information is available online.
Nicolas Simeha is perfectly suited to this work, as he is a member of the multidisciplinary company Elastic Theatre with whom he premiered Baroque Box and Julius. He collaborated with the Dancer Darren Ellis, appeared as the first bad robber in Judith Weir’s Vanishing Bridegroom,, sang with a computer for Oded Ben Tal, premiered Kate Whitley’s opera In Flagrante, embodied Gurdjieff’s thoughts sculpted by Giorgi Janiashvili, and even modeled for photographer Romain Leblanc.
Stéphane Degout prepares for Lessons in Love and Violence
The Royal Opera will present the world premiere of George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence from May 10-26 at the Royal Opera House's mainstage in London. Benjamin's second opera is a co-production with six other opera houses and includes the team behind his highly successful Written on Skin.
Written on Skin has become the second most performed new opera in the 21st century.
The cast for Lessons in Love and Violence will feature French barihunk Stéphane Degout as the King, Hungarian-Romanian barihunk Gyula Orendt as his lover Gaveston and Icelandic barihunk Andri Björn Róbertsson as a Madman. The remainder of the cast includes Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan as Isabel, British tenor Peter Hoare Mortimer and British tenor Samuel Boden as the Young King.
The project began two years ago, when the Royal Opera House commissioned George Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp to write a new work, following the huge success of Written on Skin, a medieval-set story in which the creation of an illuminated manuscript leads to adultery, murder and cannibalism.
Lessons in Love and Violence is a re-imagining of the life of Edward II and his doomed relationship with Piers Gaveston, the first Earl of Cornwall, and is presented as seven lessons seen through the eyes of the monarch’s two children. This is the second opera to be written in recent years based on the same topic, as Swiss composer Andrea
Lorenzo Scartazzini premiered his new opera about Edward II at the Deutsche Oper Berlin last year.
Lessons in Love and Violence will be performed at the Dutch National Opera in June 2018, Hamburg State Opera in April 2019 and at Opéra de Lyon in May 2019.
Jacques Imbrailo will premiere composer Daníel Bjarnason's new opera Brødre (Brothers) at the Danish National Opera on August 16th. The opera is based on Susanne Bier’s film Brothers, which is part of the Musikhuset Aarhus’ Bier Trilogy, in which the acclaimed film trilogy by Susanne Bier is adapted into three different genres. Brothers will be performed as an opera, After the Wedding as musical theatre and Open Hearts as modern dance.
Bier not only directed the 2004 film
version of Brothers, but she also co-wrote the screenplay for the opera
adaptation with Anders Thomas Jensen. The opera will be directed by Kasper Holten.
The tale relates the story of two
brothers who both fall in love with the same woman. While the elder
brother is on military service in Afghanistan, leaving his family behind
in Denmark, the younger brother – who has just came out of prison –
ends up spending a lot of time with the family. When they are informed
that the elder brother is missing in action, a love grows between the
younger brother and the sister-in-law out of solitude and despair. And
when the hero returns from war, everything changes.
Performances are on August 16, 18, 20 and 22. Tickets are available online.
French barihunk Stéphane Degout is returning to the Aix Festival in Philippe Boesmans' Pinocchio, which was commissioned for this year's festival. Degout performs four key roles in the opera, the troupe director, the crook, a murderer and the circus director. Performances run through July 16th.
Joël Pommerat's libretto is based on his 2008 stage play, which returns the narrative to Carlo Collodi's original 1883 fable. In this version, Pinocchio escapes his maker Geppetto and is anything but a cute wooden figure. The villains are hardly what one would think of as characters in children's story.
Last night, the Dutch National Opera premiered Mohammed Fairouz's The New Prince, which celebrates the 500th anniversary of the book in 2032. The piece is set in both the past and in the future and features the barihunk trio of Joshua Hopkins as Niccolò Machiavelli, Paulo Szot as Alexander Hamilton, Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney (three very different characters!), and Dominic Kraemer as Prince Saud al-Faisal.
Paulo Szot as Bill Clinton
Besides Machiavelli, it features well-known people of our day,
including Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Osama bin
Laden, as well as a fantasy world ruler Wu Virtu. Machiavelli’s lover is
Fortuna, who is also his publisher. There is even a scene where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump fight over a blow-up globe of the world.
Niccoló Machiavelli’s famous book The Prince describes the means that can be used by a dictator in strengthening his position. He can even permit himself lies and deceit, providing he ensures that they do not come to light. The politician/diplomat/writer was way ahead of his time.
Dominic Kraemer and a scene from The New Prince
The relevance of Machiavelli’s writing to today inspired composer Mohammed Fairouz to write his second opera. The opera's ultimate message of the piece is delivered by Wu Virtu, which is "the end of war is war" and that aggression met with aggression is a only zero-sum game.
There are three remaining performances on March 26, 28 and 29.
Barihunks Jesse Blumberg and David McFerrin will be featured in the world premiere of composer Julian Grant and librettist Mark Campbell’s The Nefarious,
Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare. The opera will be the first full-length piece in Boston Lyric Opera's New Works series.
Set in 1820s Scotland – when the city’s famed schools of anatomy faced a
severe shortage of fresh cadavers for their lectures – the opera
follows William Burke, William Hare and their accomplices who discover a
money-making opportunity by murdering disenfranchised citizens and
selling their corpses to Dr. Robert Knox at his renowned medical
academy.
The opera will be staged at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama, an historic building whose neoclassical Victorian style reflects the story’s 19th century time period, and whose circular interior recalls early operating theaters where observers watched medical procedures.
The cast also includes tenor William Burden and soprano Marie McLaughlin.
The upcoming season will also include Puccini's Tosca, Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera and Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Tickets and additional cast information is available online.
On July 28th, barihunk David Adam Moore will be making his Salzburger Festpiele debut in the world premiere of Adès’ The Exterminating Angel. He will be creating the role of Colonel Alvaro and will be joined by fellow barihunk Rafael Fingerlos as Enrique and hunkentenor Ed Lyon as Eduardo. The remainder of the all-star cast includes Alice Coote, Frederic Antoun,
Amanda Echalaz and Audrey Luna, Charles Workman, Frédéric Antoun, Sir Thomas Allen, John Tomlinson and Anne Sofie von Otter.
The opera, which is a co-commission between
the Met, the Salzburg Festival and the Royal Opera, features a libretto by Tom Cairns who based the work on the 1962 Luis Buñuel film of the same name. The co-commission was originally announced in 2011, but was delayed for unspecified reasons. After Salzburg, it will be performed at London's Royal Opera from April 24-May 8, 2017, New York's
Metropolitan Opera in the Fall of 2017 and eventually at the Den Kongelige Opera in Copenhagen.
Rafael Fingerlos
Adès was inspired by Luis Buñuel’s surrealist film El ángel exterminador, which deals with the social rituals of an elite upper class, stating, “It’s territory that I like very much because it looks as though the
people are in a room, but it’s not really about the room, they’re
actually trapped in their own heads.“
Performances will run from July 28 through August 8th and tickets are available online.
Bass-barihunk Antonio Di Matteo will sing in the first modern staging of Saverio Mercadante's Francesca da Rimini at the 42nd Festival della Valle d'Itria under the guidance of music director Fabio Luisi. The modern world premiere, directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, will be on July 30, 2016 with performances running through August 4. The opera was scheduled to be premiered at the Wexford Festival in 2012, but it was scrapped due to the difficulty of musically reconstructing the piece.
The opera's libretto was written by Felice Romani and was intended to be premiered in Madrid in 1831, but the theater burned down and it's unclear if it was ever performed or if the score was even published.
Antonio di Matteo sings Vecchia Zimarra from Puccini's La bohème:
Other composers have tackled the story of Francesca di Rimini, who was a historical contemporary of Dante Alighieri, who portrayed her as a character in the Divine Comedy. Riccardo Zandonai composed a four act opera that has proven to be a diva vehicle for such great sopranos as Magda Olivero, Renata Scotto and Eva-Maria Westbroek. Rachmaninov also wrote a shorter version with a libretto by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky written with a prologue, two tableaux and an epilogue.
In November, Di Matteo can be seen as Sparafucile in Verdi's Rigoletto at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. He then heads to the Bavarian State Opera to sing Alcindoro in Puccini's La bohème with fellow barihunk Michael Nagy as Marcello.
Barihunk Romain Dayez will be performing the title role in Cavalli's L’Oristeo, which has been all but forgotten to time. The performance is being dubbed the opera's "second world premiere."
The performances at Opera Marseilles with the members of Concerto Soave will directed by Olivier Lexa, who has updated the production with video projections while staying true to the period. The musicians ofConcertoSoavewill bearrangedon either sideofthe stage,strings and windsfacingeach accompanied byacontinuo.
The opera was reconstructed by Lexa from a manuscript that appeared to be hastily scribbled by Cavalli and deemed almost illegible. The opera is notable for containing one of the first examples of a da capo aria, Udite amanti, sung by Corinta (sung by Lucie Roche in this production).
Watch a recital with Romain Dayez:
The opera was written with a prologue and three acts and was designated as a dramma per musica. Cavalli
and Faustini, his favorite librettist, collaborated on eight operas in the
1640s. However, Faustini's
untimely death in 1651 ended the collaboration that gave birth in a
year and a half to L’Oristeo, La Rosinda, L’Eritrea and La Calisto. It premiered at theTeatro Sant 'Apollinare on February 9, 1651, just four decades after
Monteverdi's Orfeo, which is often considered the first opera.
Performances are on March 11 and 13th.
Other cast members include Aurora Tirotta as Diomeda and Amore, Maïlys de Villoutreys as Ermino and Nemeo, Pascal Bertin as Oresde, Zachary Wilder as Trasimede and Lis Viricel as Euralio.
On April 4th, bass-barihunk Justin Hopkins will perform the New York Premiere of Nolan Gasser's Repast and the World Premiere of James Matheson's Windows in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Accompanied by Bruce Livingston, he'll also perform songs by Philip Glass and Franz Schubert. Tickets are available online.
Gasser's Repast is an oratorio based on the life of the Mississippi civil rights figure Booker Wright with a libretto by PEN/Faulkner Award-winner Kevin Young. Booker Wright was a black waiter at Lusco’s, an all-white restaurant in
Greenwood, Mississippi, who heroically spoke truth to power during a
1965 interview with NBC News. The oratorio tells his story of struggle
and hope for the future during the height of the Civil Rights movement.
Watch Nolan Gasser's Repast in its entirety with Justin Hopkins:
After the two premieres, he flies to the opposite coast for a more traditional program of works by Brahms, Handel, Verdi, Rachmaninoff and African-American art songs and spirituals. The April 9th performance will be at the Berkeley Piano Club and tickets are available online.
From May 14-22 he'll return to the opera stage to perform the East-coast premier of Franco Faccio's Amleto at Opera Delaware.
Jospeh Lattanzi in his Barihunk t-shirt at the Seattle Opera (left) and at a Merola Opera performance (right)
Gregory Spears' new opera, Fellow Travelers, will receive a piano-vocal showcase at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on March 20th at 4 PM. This is the composer's first full-length opera, which follows Paul's Case and O Columbia. Paul's Case was a huge success at the 2014 Prototype Festival and subsequently at the Pittsburgh Opera. The opera was originally developed by American Opera Projects. O Columbia was presented last year by the Houston Grand Opera and featured barihunk Ben Edquist.
Fellow Travelers, which was written in collaboration with librettist Greg Pierce and director Kevin Newbury, was developed in a 2013 Opera Fusion workshop. It will feature former Barihunks calendar model Joseph Lattanzi, who will sing both the showcase and the world premiere.
Performances of Fellow Travelers will run at the Cincinnati Opera
from June 17-July 10 at the Jarson-Kaplan Theater. In addition to
Lattanzi, it will feature hunkentenor Aaron Blake, Mary Johnson,
Alexandra Schoeny and Talya Lieberman. Tickets and additional
information is available online.
Joseph Lattanzi performs "Our Very Own Home" from Fellow Travelers:
Fellow Travelers, set in Washington against the backdrop of the McCarthy-era "lavender scare," tells the story of Timothy “Skippy” Laughlin, an aspiring young journalist, and Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller, a handsome, profligate State Department official. A chance encounter with Hawk leads to Tim's first job in DC, and his first love affair. As his involvement deepens, Tim struggles to reconcile his political convictions, his religious beliefs, and his love for Fuller – an entanglement that will end in a stunning act of betrayal. The libretto is based on the novel by American novelist, essayist and critic Thomas Mallon.
On February 27th, Lattanzi will sing the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Arizona Opera with fellow barihunk Ryan Kuster as Masetto and the talented Matthew Burns as his sidekick Leporello. Barihunk Morgan Smith will sing the other performances of Don Giovanni. Additional cast and ticket information is available online.
Composer Clint Borzoni (left) and Barihunk Marco Vassalli (right) and a peak at "Stufen"
The buzz has been building for the world premiere of the new Clint Borzoni songs for String Quartet & Baritone, which will be sung by Marco Vassalli in his official US debut on January 22 & 24 in San Francisco with Musica Marin. We've heard the music and seen the scores and can attest to their stunning beauty. We predict that these songs will become standard fare alongside Barber's Dover Beach, which is also on the program along with songs by Schubert and Richard Strauss.
The Sunday matinee is selling fast (https://goo.gl/hjyBSy) and the Friday night tickets are available here (https://goo.gl/ZzSQ4N). But if you're not in Northern California there are still many ways to enjoy this amazing operatic experience. On Wednesday, December 16th you can watch the first online rehearsal of the music on Periscope (so make sure to LIKE Musica Marin on both Facebook and Twitter. The link will be available there on the day of the rehearsal).
Italian-German barihunk Marco Vassalli is making his much anticipated
U.S. debut with Musica Marin in with
these songs, which were selected by and written for the singer. Vassalli chose Hermann Hesse's Stufen and Hilde Domin's Margere Kost. You can click HERE to the singer discuss why he chose these texts.
Borzoni recently completed his fourth opera, When Adonis Calls,
based on the poetry of Gavin Dillard and arranged by John de los Santos. The opera was presented at
Fort Worth Opera’s 2015 Frontiers Showcase. He is currently working on his fifth opera, The Copper Queen, also with librettist John de los Santos for Arizona Opera’s program, Arizona Spark.
Borzoni and Vassalli have never met in person and have worked on the songs
together over Facebook video and Skype. San Francisco's Bay Area
Reporter broke the news in a recent article, which you can read HERE.
Marco Vassalli posing for his calendar in the Loire Valley
The premiere is being funded with an Indiegogo campaign with perks that include having one of the songs
dedicated to you, a signed page from the composer's notebook, copies of
Vassalli's CD of Italian songs and access to numerous private events and
concerts. Additional funding is coming from a provocative new calendar which Vassalli posed for and is available for sale HERE.
Vassalli is currently performing in Leonard Bernstein's Candide at the Staatsoper Hannover.
A German singer born of Italian roots, he grew up on Lake Constance and
began his studies at the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne, where he
studied with the famed soprano Edda Moser.
Israeli barihunk Oded Reich, who is new to Barihunks, will open on July 3rd in the world premiere of Yoni Rechter's Schitz, which is part of a double-bill with Haim Permont's The Lady and the Peddler at the New Israeli Opera. Both operas feature all-Israeli casts.
Schitz has a libretto by Hanoch Levin and edited by Muli Meltzer. It tells the story of the Schitz family, a stereotypiccal Israeli family who want to get daughter Shprachtzi married. Desperate to get away from her parents, she meets a former IDF officer Tcharchess, sung by Reich. She
wants a wedding ring and a family, but he wants the family inheritance and schemes to get rid of the parents. War breaks out and things
don’t quite go as planned for everyone involved.
The Lady and the Peddler is set in Russia of 1940 and centers on an exiled Jew trying to make his way through life. Performances run through July 10th. For tickets and more information for the double-bill, call (03) 692-7777 or order online.
Oded Reich and Alla Vasilevitsky sing La ci darem la mano from Don Giovanni:
Oded Reich studied at the Jerusalem Music Academy
before becoming a member of the Israeli Opera Studio in 2011 and the
Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv. At the Israeli Opera he performed the title
role in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Akko Festival, Prince Yamadori and the Imperial Commissar in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Marullo and Usciere in Verdi's Rigoletto, Marchese and Dr. Grenvil in Verdi's La Traviata, Montano in Verdi's Otello, Silvano in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, Luther in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann and other roles. He is also a founding-member of Profeti della Quinta, an ensemble of male voices performing a repertoire of Renaissance and early Baroque music.
Barihunk Keith Phares (with beard) and Hunkentenor Jonathan Blalock
Over the years we've made no secret that we occassionally have hunkentenor crushes. We understand that baritones don't always have a monopoly on hunkiness, so we like to sneak on a tenor once in awhile. Jonathan Blalock is a singer with outstanding musicianship and male model looks, so what's not to love? When we learned he was performing with barihunk Keith Phares, we knew that a post was in order.
The two singers are performing in the world premiere of Gregory Spears’ Paul’s Case! at UrbanArias at Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia. The opera is based on the famous short story by Willa Cather. Blalock plays the lead role of Paul, the son of an businessman in early 20th-century Pittsburgh, who is played by Keith Phares. Paul, who is tired of his dreary existence steals money from his job and runs off to New York City to taste freedom and enjoy a life of luxury.
There are three remaining performances this weekend and tickets are available at 888.841.2787 or online.
Upcoming performance for Keith Phares include the premiere of Eric Sawyer's The Garden of Martyrs, the title role in Elmer Gantry with Tulsa Opera and Marcello in La bohème with Manitoba Opera. Jonathan Blalock can next be seen debuting Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni at Nevada Opera on May 17 and 19.
Matthew Worth strikes his Father Flynn pose
2012 (c) Aleutian Calabay for Minnesota Opera
The Minnesota Opera is presenting the world premiere of Douglas J. Cuomo’sopera Doubt, which opens
on January 26th and runs through February 3rd. The libretto was written by playwright John Patrick Shanley, who based it on
his Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play. The opera was commissioned
by Minnesota Opera in collaboration with the Cincinnati Opera and the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. The opera is part of the opera company’s New Works Initiative, a
landmark program designed to invigorate the operatic repertoire with an
infusion of contemporary works.
Matthew Worth on playing Father Flynn in Doubt:
The premiere of Doubt will feature
Matthew Worth as Father Flynn, who is accused of inappropriate behavior with a young African-American student. Soprano Christine Brewer will sing the role of the school principal Sister Aloysius, who makes the accusations and sets the drama in motion at the Bronx-based Roman Catholic in 1964. The young, idealistic Sister James will be played by Adriana Zabala and the boy's mother by mezzo Denyce Graves. Other than a chorus and a children's chorus, these are the only vocal roles. The opera will be conducted by
Christopher Franklin and directed by Kevin Newbury. Tickets are available online.
Matthew Worth on Mozart and modern American opera:
Matthew Worth returns to the Minnesota Opera after a successful run as Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte in the 2011-12 season. After Doubt he'll return to the role of Guglielmo on March 15th with the Boston Lyric Opera. On April 4th and 6th, he returns to Opera Memphis to partake in the Midtown Opera Festival in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. This is his third world premiere, as he created the role of William Shrike in Lowell Liebermann's Miss Lonelyhearts with the Juilliard Opera and the Coachman in Stephen Hartke's The Greater Good at Glimmerglass Opera, which was recorded for Naxos.
Matthew Worth talks about the music of Doubt:
The play Doubt: A Parable
by John Patrick Shanley, won both the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for
Drama and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play. In 2008, Shanley wrote and
directed the motion picture adaptation of Doubt, starring Meryl
Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. The film
was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Adapted
Screenplay nod for Shanley.
The Opera Theatre of St. Louis has announced that barihunk Aubrey Allicock will star as bisexual boxer Emile Griffith in the world premiere of Champion on June 15, 2013. The opera was written by jazz great Tereence Blanchard with a libretto by playwright Michael Cristofer and will also star mezzo Denyce Graves.
Aubrey Allicock has become an instant fan favorite at the Opera Theatre where he played Mamoud in The Death of Klinghoffer in 2011 and the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland in 2012. Local opera fans got to know him during his two year stint with the Gerdine Young Artist program where he performed the roles of Zaretsky in Eugene Onegin and the Customs Official in La bohème.
Terence Blanchard: Taxi Driver:
Emile Griffith was a three-time World Welterweight Champion and twice a World Middleweight Champion, fighting from the late 1950s into the 1970s. However, one of his greatest professional triumphs – winning back the Welterweight Championship from Benny “The Kid” Paret in 1962 – was also one of his greatest personal tragedies. The seventeen punches he landed on Paret in seven seconds resulted in not only a knockout, but also a coma from which Paret would never recover. Paret would die ten days later.
The end of the Griffith-Paret fight + Norman Mailer's commentary:
Before that life-changing televised fight, in a room full of press and officials, Paret mocked Griffith repeatedly with a derogatory term for homosexual. Years later, Griffith’s sexuality as a gay man was revealed to the public after he was nearly killed by a gang outside a gay bar in New York. “I kill a man,” Griffith was quoted to have said, “and most people understand and forgive me. I love a man, and to so many people this is an unforgiveable sin.” In an inspiring, moving, and painful journey of self-discovery, Champion presents audiences with a great contemporary tragic hero – a man of strength and courage consumed ultimately by rage, regret, and the terrible consequences of his actions.
Today, Griffith requires full time care and suffers from pugilistic dementia.
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.
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