Reader Submission: Edward Laurenson from New Zealand

Edward Laurenson

25-year-old New Zealand native Edward Laurenson is our latest reader submission. He graduated from the University of Auckland in 2010 with a Bachelor of Commerce, and completed his Honours in 2011. The lyric baritone was influenced to become a singer listening to Freddie Mercury of Queen.

In 2012-13, he was selected to be an Emerging Artist with The Dame Malvina Major Foundation, and subsequently performed in the New Zealand Opera production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly. He has also been a regular performer with the Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus, where he performed major roles.

Before pursing a career in opera full-time, he performed in a number of musicals, including Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, he Tin Man in The Wiz, Tony in Bernstein's West Side Story and Danny in Grease.

Edward Laurenson talks about his career:

In 2012, he was awarded Vocal National Young Performer of the Year at Performing Arts Competitions Association of New Zealand, and the Lieder prize at the New Zealand Aria competition. He has also won the Guildhall School of Music & Drama Award, as well as the Australian Opera Awards Committee’s Sheila Prior Memorial Prize, Phoebe Patrick Award and the David Harper Award.

 Edward Laurenson sings "Hai già vinta la causa!" from Marriage of Figaro:

He is currently one of six finalists in the 2014 Lexus Song Quest competition, with winners being announced on July 26th. The Lexus Song Quest has launched the careers of some of New Zealand’s most celebrated opera stars including Dames Kiri Te Kanawa, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Amitai Pati, Malvina Major, Jonathan Lemalu, Madeleine Pierard and Phillip Rhodes.

Reader Submission: Model turned Barihunk Oleg Loza

Oleg Loza

Our latest Reader Submission is the Moscow bass-barihunk Oleg Loza. We hear numerous barihunks described as having "model looks," but Loza actually was a model at the Slava Zaitsev Model Agency. He modeled while completing his Master's Degree in Voice at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.

Loza reminds many of his fellow compatriot Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who shares his flowing long hair that gives them both a pop star vibe. Like Hvorostovsky, he is a serious classical singer, who originally studied voice and choral conducting before pursuing a career as a singer. In 2009, he won the prestigious Feodor Chaliapin Singing Competition in Yalta.

Oleg Loza sings Valentin's aria from Gounod's Faust:

After graduating from the Conservatory in 2012, he made his professional debut as Norton in Rossini's La cambiale di matrimonio at the Wiener Kammeroper in Austria. He followed that up with a run as Schaunard in Puccini's La boheme at both the Wiener Kammeroper and Amsterdam's Het Companientheater.

Since that time, he's been a young artist with the Zürich Opera, where he has performed Usciere in Verdi's Rigoletto and Deputato in Verdi's Don Carlo. He is currently singing Happy in Puccini's La fanciulla del West, which runs through July 13th and will run again September 24-October 10.

Our best material comes from our readers, so send your submissions to Barihunks@gmail.com

Barihunks Humm & Estabrooks featured online!

Äneas Humm

Five days ago, we posted about the 19-year-old Swiss wunderkind Äneas Humm. You can now watch the 21-minute documentary that appeared on Swiss television online. Although the segment is in German, non-German speakers will enjoy clips of him studying with the great soprano Kristina Laki, performing onstage and peaking behind the curtain at his personal life.

We have also just learned that Humm will be replacing a baritone in Bremen tomorrow and performing Wolfgang Rihm's Hölderlin-Gedichte.

Jonathan Estabrooks

Another barihunk will be online tomorrow, when calendar model Jonathan Estabrooks will be taking questions online and showcasing music from his new CD, THESE MILES. The program, "The Story Of Jonathan Estabrooks" will air on Tuesday, July 8th at YTP RADIO. You can purchase his debut album at Amazon.

Aaron Sørensen to sing Colline in reopened historic theatre

Aaron Sørensen from the Barihunks calendar & the Criterion Theatre in Maine

Aaron Sørensen, who was one of this year's recipients of a Barihunks calendar grant, made his West Coast recital debut in a concert with hunkentenor Jonathan Blalock with the grant. Having wowed audiences along the Pacific Ocean with his sonorous low notes, he now returns to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. He'll be at the Bar Harbor Music Festival performing Colline in a single night performance of Puccini's La boheme. 

The opera will be performed in the historic art-deco Criterion Theater in downtown Bar Harbor. Opened in 1932 as a movie palace, prominent families like the Rockefellers, who vacationed in the area, were frequent patrons. The theatre is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and recently reopened after a $150,000 upgrade 
to their marquee. 

Aaron Sørensen sings Mozart's "Alcandro, lo confesso" at his West Coast recital debut at Duende (Don't miss the low note at the end!):

Now in its 48th season, the Bar Harbor Music Festival has advanced the careers of over 1,800 aspiring instrumentalists, singers, and composers, presenting a summer of music encompassing recitals, chamber music, Pops, a new composers series, opera, jazz, and string orchestra concerts.

La boheme will be performed on Friday, July 11 at 8:00 p.m.. The cast also includes Jonathan Lasch as Marcello, Chad Sloan as Schaunard, Janinah Burnett as Mimi and Scott Scully as Rodolfo. Tickets are available online.

Interview with stars of Cincinnati Opera's "Silent Night"

Gabriel Preisser (Photo: Provided/Opera Philadelphia, Dominic Mercier)

As the Cincinnati Opera gears up to be the latest company to present Kevin Puts' Silent Night, the Cincinnati Enquirer sat down and interviewed three of the leading baritones from the production. Here is the interview with Craig Irvin, Gabriel Preisser and Andrew Wilkowske.

You were all in the world premiere at Minnesota Opera in 2011. Tell us about your characters.
Preisser: I play Lt. Gordon, the Scottish lieutenant who proposes the truce. I think he’s the kind of person who’s trying to do the right thing. He doesn’t go into it wanting to fraternize, but his troops are exhausted and he’s told they’ll be home for Christmas. The Scottish, I assume, have no idea why they’re fighting. It’s not their war. Yet there they are. So when he sees these German soldiers singing Christmas carols, and the bagpipe player jumps up on the trench, he has no choice but to say we need to have a truce.
Irvin: I’m Lt. Horstmayer, the German, who has to deal with Sprink (a private who is an opera singer), who’s questioning him all the time and going into no-man’s land, where Horstmayer feels he’ll be killed any moment.
Wilkowske: My character is Ponchel, the aide-de-camp of the French lieutenant. He’s the comic relief. … In an opera that’s about people getting killed all the time, it’s nice to be the guy who gets to have a couple of jokes. He carries an alarm clock to remind him that he used to have coffee every day at that time with his mother.
Irvin: In the Muppet opera version, we decided he’s Fozzie.
Preisser: In the “MASH” version, he’s Radar O’Reilly.

[Read the entire interview at the Cincinnati Enquirer]

Performances are on July 10 and 12 and tickets are available online.

Watch the Glyndebourne Don Giovanni online

Gerald Finley and Luca Pisaroni at Glyndebourne

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." 

Barihunk Festival at Salzburg Festival

Add Günther Groissböck and Alessio Arduini

The 2014 Salzburg Festival will run from July 18-August and will feature barihunks in almost all of their productions, including many of the biggest names in opera.

The Festival will be paying tribute to Richard Strauss' 150th  birthday by performing Der Rosenkavalier. The opera will feature barihunk Günther Groissböck as Baron Ochs in his role debut (which he will reprise at the Met). The cast also includes Krassimira Stoyanova as the Marschallin and Sophie Koch as Octavian.

The Festival will continue their Mozart/da Ponte cycle introduced in 2013 with a new production of Don Giovanni directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf. The cast includes a trio of barihunks led by Ildebrando d'Arcangelo in the title role, Luca Pisaroni as his sidekick Leporello and the dashing Italian baritone Alessio Arduini as Masetto.

René Pape will be featured in a concert performance of music from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde featuring the prelude, Act 2 and Isolde’s transfiguration featuring Waltraud Meier.

Austrian barihunk Markus Werba will sing Roland opposite the Florinda of Dorothea Röschmann in Schubert's rarely performed Fierabras. The libretto combines two episodes from the cycle of legends associated with the Frankish leader Charlemagne and is set against the background of the skirmishes between Christians and Muslims.

Jean-Sébastien Bou and Markus Werba

Baroque specialist Jean-Sébastien Bou will star in the premiere of librettist Barbara Honigmann and composer Marc-André Dalbavie's Charlotte Salomon, which is dedicated to Gerard Mortier. Directed by Luc Bondy, Charlotte Salomon is based on the work of a Jewish artist who died at age 26 in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Saloman fled to southern France following the Kristallnacht pogrom in Berlin where she joined her grandparents. Her grandmother threw herself to her death from an upstairs window, which was the same way that her mother had died when the girl was nine.

Other productions include Anna Netrebko as Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore, which includes Plácido Domingo in the baritone role of the Count di Luna, Rossini's La Cenerentola with Cecilia Bartoli and a children's performance of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail featuring Salzburg young artists.

All in all, the Festival will feature over 250 performances including opera, theater and concerts. Tickets and additional performance information is available online.