Bass-barihunk Laurence Meikle in Meyerbeer rarity Margherita d'Anjou

Laurence Meikle

Laurence Meikle, who recently made the transition to bass, opened last night at the Festival della Valle d'Itria as Carlo Belmonte in Meyerbeer's rarely performed opera Margherita d'Anjou. Meikle began exploring the transition to bass in 2016 when he performed Mozart's Così fan tutte with Fabio Luisi at the Festival della Valle d'Itria.

Margherita d'Anjou marked Meyerbeer's debut and first real success at the Teatro alla Scala. The opera is loosely based on an actual historical themes about the English Wars of the Roses. The opera was the first by Meyerbeer to mix historical events and personages with fictional characters and situations, as his French grand operas Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L'Africaine were later to do.  It contains opulent virtuoso and broad choral passages, along with several ensembles for male voices, including a trio for bass voices. 

Laurence Meikle

The opera premiered at La Scala on November 14, 1820 and was subsequently performed throughout Europe in Italian, French and German. It received its US debut in New Orleans on  April 17, 1854. This is the first modern era production of the opera that is fully stage, There was a concert performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London in November 2002. A new critical edition of the score was published by Ricordi Berlin in 2015.

From October 29 to November 8, Meikle will return to the Teatro di San Carlo as Osmin in the Strehler production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He performed there earlier this year as Grenvil in Verdi's La traviata.

Barihunk Leon Kim wins two prizes at Operalia Competition; Boris Prýgl takes Nilsson Prize

Korean barihunk Leon Kim

Korean barihunk Leon Kim walked away with both the Third Place prize and the Rolex Audience Prize at the 2017 Operalia Competition. Bass-barihunk Boris Prýgl also won the Birgit Nilsson Prize for the best singer of Wagner/Strauss repertory.

This year three baritones made it to final fourteen of the Operalia Competition, including South Korean Leon Kim, American Emmett O'Hanlon and Boris Prygl from the Czech Republic. Leon Kim was also one of the five finalists in the Zarzuela competition. The event was held at the Astana Opera in Kazakhstan. First prize is US $30,000, Second Prize is $20,000 and Thrid Prize is $10,000.

The last low male voices to win were bass-baritone Ao Li from China, who took the top men's prize in 2013 and Mongolian bass Enkhbatyn Amartüvshin, who took top honors the previous year.

The winner of the 2017 Pepita Embil Prize of Zarzuela for female voice is Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia and the winner of the Don Plácido Domingo Ferrer Prize of Zarzuela for male voice is Italian tenor Marco Ciaponi.

The 2017 Culturarte Prize went to Korean soprano Sooyeon Lee.

Boris Prýgl

The 2017 Birgit Nilsson Prize for the repertoire of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner went to bass-baritone Boris Prýgl for male voice and to soprano Oksana Sekerin for female voice.

The winner of Third Place prize went to Korean baritone Leon Kim for male voice and Kazakhstan soprano Maria Mudryak for female voice.

The winner of Second Place for male voice went to Italian tenor Davide Giusti and to Russian soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan for female voice.

The Grand Prize winner for male voice went to South African tenor Levy Sekgapane and for female voice Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia.

The Rolex Audience Prize went to South Korean baritone Leon Kim and for female voice Kazakhstan soprano Maria Mudryak.

The 2014 Operalia Competition became known as the "Baritone Blackout," as 11 of the 40 competitors were baritones, but not a single baritone made it to the final round. No low male voice won any of the fourteen prizes handed out that year. This was in spite of the low voice competitors including some amazing talents, including Igor Bakan, Aleksey Bogdanov, Alexandre Duhamel, Dan Kempson, Alexey Lavrov, Alex Lawrence, Shea Owens, Damien Pass, Pavel Shmulevich, Anatoli Sivko and Ivan Thirion. 

Past Operalia winners have included Anthony Roth Costanzo, Lise Davidsen, Ainhoa Arteta, Nina Stemme, Brian Asawa, José Cura, Elizabeth Futral, Eric Owens, Janai Brugger, Erwin Schrott, Joyce DiDonato, Rolando Villazon, Joseph Calleja, Susanna Phillips, Ailyn Perez, Olga Peretyatko and Sonya Yoncheva.

Barihunk duo in Amy Beach rarity "Cabildo"

Tyler Putnam (Photo by Devon Cass)

Barihunk Bryan Murray and bass-barihunk Tyler Putnam are performing in Amy Beach's rarely performed opera Cabildo. Both singers are new to the site.

Set in New Orleans, the composer’s only opera recounts the legend of a French noblewoman who gives a bracelet to a pirate as a proclamation of her love. When she disappears mysteriously at sea, he is accused of her murder, imprisoned and then released in time to defend the city in the War of 1812.

Beach composed the music in 1932 and made use of folksong and Creole tunes. The work was not performed in her lifetime and didn't receive its premiere until 1947.

Performances run from July 26-August 2 and tickets are available online. 

Bryan Murray's winning set at the  2016 Heida Hermanns Competition:

Bryan Murray, who sings  Pierre Lafitte in Cabildo, is a 2017 Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Apprentice Artist at Central City Opera and winner of the 2016 Heida Hermanns International Voice Competition. He pursued his Master of Musical Arts degree from Yale University, as well as receiving his Master's in vocal performance from the Purchase College Conservatory of Music.

Tyler Putnam, who sings  Gaoler in Cabildo, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Dartmouth College. In 2014 and 2015, he was a Santa Fe Opera apprentice artist where he sang the role of Thomas in Jennifer Higden's Cold Mountain, appeared in Verdi's Rigoletto and Strauss' Salome, as well as covering Rocco in Beethoven's Fidelio. In October, he will make his role debut as Colline in Puccini's La bohème at Malloy College. He then performs Handel's Messiah with The Villages Philharmonic in Florida.

Introducing Bass-barihunk Carlo Checchi; Belcore at Festspiele Immling

Carlo Checchi

Italian bass-barihunk Carlo Checchi is new to our site and was brought to our attention by a reader, Checchi is performing Belcore in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore through August 13th at the Festspiele Immling in Germany. The cast also includes Sergio Foresti (who we should also feature) as Dulcamara, Elisa Cenni as Adina, Chuanliang Wang as Nemorino and Anastasia Churakova as Gianetta. Tickets and additional information is available online.

Cecchi, who also has a degree in computer engineering, studied voice at l'Istituto Musicale Pareggiato "Vittadini" di Pavia. He was the winner of the VI Concorso ArteInCanto Competition.

Carlo Checchi

He made his debut at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa as Apollo in Mozart's Apollo and Hyacinth. His past roles include Figaro in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Teatro Valle in Rome, as well as in opera houses in Lucca, Pisa and Livorno; Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflote at the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman; and, Count Almaviva in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Tirana.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky adds two concerts to schedule

Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Two new concerts have appeared on the website of Siberian barihunk Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who the Associated Press had recently reported was canceling all performances for the coming season due to “severe illness.”

First up will be a September 22nd recital at the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, Romania, which is already sold out. The concert features a collections of Russian songs, including music by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Borodin and Anton Rubinstein. This will be followed by a September 26th recital with regular collaborator Ivari Ilja at the Moscow Conservatoire. No details are given on the website. His last program with him included music by Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss, with a poignant encore of "Farewell, happiness."

Hvorostovsky was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2015. He was due to play leading roles in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, Otello and Rigoletto in Vienna this year and next, but canceled those engagements. He also withdrew from performances of the Met's production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, where he was replaced by fellow barihunks Peter Mattei and Mariusz Kwiecien. In April, he did make an appearance in Toronto with Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov.

Introducing Glimmerglass barihunk Jarrett Porter

Jarrett Porter

We recently featured a post about what we believe to be the largest single gathering of barihunks since we started blogging, as about a dozen hunky low voices are currently performing at the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York. A few of the singers in that post have not appeared on our site before, so we thought we'd start with an introduction of Jarrett Porter. 

Porter is currently a Young Artist at The Glimmerglass Festival, where he is singing Sam in Oklahoma! and covering the role of The English Spy in the American premiere of Donizetti's The Siege of Calais, under the direction of Francesca Zambello. 

Porter joins Arizona Opera for their 2017/18 season as a Marion Roose Studio Artist, where he will make his debut in the title role of Patrick Morganelli’s film-opera collaboration Hercules vs Vampires. Other roles with the company will includ Sciarrone in Puccini's Tosca, Maximilian in Bernstein's Candide, and Fiorello in Rossini's The Barber of Seville with fellow barihunk Jared Bybee in the title role.

Jarrett Porter sings Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen":

This past season Porter made his NPR debut with selections from Schubert's Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin with accompanist Taylor Hutchinson, and narration by Graham Johnson and Sir Thomas Allen. He was also seen in recital with Jake Heggie at the German Consulate of San Francisco in a program of Jake's newest works, including selections from his new chamber opera, Out of Darkness. 
 

Jarrett Porter

Recent roles have included the title role in Don Giovanni, Chevalier des Grieux in Massenet's Le portrait de Manon, and Sid in Britten's Albert Herring. He is the First Prize winner of the 2017 Pacific Music Society Competition, the Ellie Silver Award winner at the Holt Competition, and the recipient of the 2017 Pankonin Art Song Award.

Hunky Pin-Up Guys in Young Vic's HMS Pinafore

CJ Hartung, Joshua Hughes, Jeffrey Williams, John Kaneklides, and with flag (L-R)

Who says that Gilbert & Sullivan can't be sexy? The Young Victorian Theatre Company has assembled a cast of three barihunks and a hunkentenor for their current run of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. The pin-up worthy cast includes barihunk Joshua Hughes as Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, First Lord of the Admiralty; barihunk Jeffrey Williams as Captain Corcoran, Commander of the HMS Pinafore; hunkentenor John Kaneklides as Ralph Rackstraw; and, bass-barihunk Christopher "CJ" Hartung as Dick Deadeye.

The show has already proved to be a huge box office success, as Saturday's opening night performance and today's matinee both completely sold out. Fortunately for anyone near the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area, there are three remaining performances on July 20, 22, and 23 at the Sinex Theater in the Roland Park area.

Joshua Hughes, graduated with a Master of Music in Voice Performance from the Peabody Conservatory, and previously appeared in the company's 2016 summer production of Iolanthe. He recently performed in Charpentier's Les Arts Florissants and Purcell's The Fairy Queen with Dallas Bach Society.

Jeffrey Williams and cast

Jeffrey Williams, who won the Middle/East Tennessee District of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, will be appearing next season with the Nashville Opera in both Puccini's Tosca and Hercules vs Vampires. He is also an Assistant Professor of Voice at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.

CJ Hartung is a student at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and is a regular young artist with the Berk's Opera Company, where he most recently sang the role of Lodovico in Verdi's Otello.

John Kaneklides has been singing both opera and musical theater, having performed Henrik in Sondheim's A Little Night Music and Tony in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. This season he made his role debut in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann with the St. Petersburg Opera, where he performed the title role.

Tickets for the remaining shows are available online.