Tom Corbeil Lurches Onto Broadway Tour

Tom Corbeil

We've posted some pretty hot pictures of barihunk Tom Corbeil over the years, especially the shirtless ones from Joseph Haydn’s "L’isola disabitata." He's currently put his opera career on hold to join the traveling cast of the Addams Family musical touring the country. Anyone who saw him shirtless in L'Isola disabitata would barely recognize him as the morticianly looking Lurch.

The Addams Family was created by Jersey Boys authors Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, Drama Desk Award winner Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party), choreographer Sergio Trujillo (Jersey Boys), and Olivier Award-winning director/designers Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (Shockheaded Peter) with production supervision by four-time Tony Award® winner Jerry Zaks.

The Road Cast of the Addams Family

The show is currently in Cleveland through April 22nd. It then travels to Memphis, Madison, St. Paul, Grand Rapids, San Diego, Los Angeles, Denver, Kansas City and Washington D.C. Check HERE to see if the show is coming to your town. 

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com

Thomas Forde "LURCHES" back into musical theater

Thomas Forde

Bass-Barihunk Thomas Forde's career has been a nice mix of opera and musical theater in recent years. On the opera stage he's performed everything from Rosini's The Barber of Seville to Shostakovich's The Nose, while he's been featured on the musical theater stage in both Les Miserables and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

This Summer and Fall, he'll be featured in the dream role for a bass on in a musical when he sings Lurch in The Addams Family: The Broadway Musical. The production will run at the New Theater Kansas City from July 16 – September 20, 2015.

The Addmas Family features a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), and music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. The musical is based on an original story. Wednesday Addams, the ultimate princess of darkness, has grown up and fallen in love with a sweet, smart young man from a respectable family. A man her parents have never met. She confides in her father (Gomez) and begs him not to tell her mother Morticia. He must do something he's never done before - keep a secret from his beloved wife. Everything will change for the whole family on the fateful night they host a dinner for Wednesday's "normal" boyfriend and his parents. 

Thomas Forde

Thomas Forde is also another of the many great bari-chunk to bari-hunk stories, having lost 100 pounds despite a thyroid condition, and even being featured in the Barihunks charity calendar. He also lectures about fitness and maintaining a healthy life style for those on the road. you can read more about it on his website.

Tom Corbeil featured in OPERA NEWS

Tom Corbeil in Opera News (Photo © Jörg Meyer 2012)

We can gauge the popularity of singers a number of ways on Barihunks, the most reliable is Google Analytics, which lets us know exactly which posts are receiving the most traffic. The other is email, which is less reliable, but a better gauge of the intensity of interest in a singer. Many famous barihunks generate a lot of traffic and email, particularly Nathan Gunn, Mariusz Kwiecien, Dmitry Hvorostovsky and, incresingly, Luca Pisaroni. It's fascinating when a younger, lesser known singer starts generating intense interest with fans, as is the case with Tom Corbeil.

Our recent post generated a lot of traffic, as well as links to older posts about the current star of the Addams Family musical. When Corbeil appeared in the recent issue of Opera News, we were inundated with emails making sure that we saw the article. The emails came from four continents, which was pretty impressive for a singer who is just beginning to make a name for himself.

Here is a highlight of the SOUND BITES feature from Opera News:

By F. Paul Driscoll

Tom Corbeil has been hitting low E-flats all over North America this season — but he hasn't been singing any opera. Explanation? Since September 2011, the thirty-four-year-old bass-baritone — who has won great notices over the past several years in Mozart, Haydn, Rossini and Puccini roles — has been on tour as Lurch, the taciturn butler in Broadway's The Addams Family. This month alone, Corbeil is scheduled to strut Lurch's stuff in Madison, Wisconsin; St. Paul, Minnesota; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and his hometown of San Diego, California. 

Although Corbeil says he has no intention of moving away from opera permanently — there are confirmed dates on his 2012–13 calendar for Rossini's Basilio at Michigan Opera Theatre and Rodolfo in Florida Grand Opera's La Sonnambula — he is enjoying his current stint as a touring actor. "I'm not singing for the entire show, so it's not as stressful as if I were doing eight Collines or eight Leporellos a week — it's more akin, from a purely vocal standpoint, to doing eight performances a week of the Marquis d'Obigny in La Traviata. That comes with its own stress, because you have a very short amount of time to make a very strong impression — or to make a very strong failure!"

[Read the entire article and Opera News HERE and, if you haven't already,  subscribe while you're there]

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com

Opera Barihunks Taking on Musical Theater

Matt Worth as Curly

There is a sudden upsurge of barihunks crossing over from opera to musical theater. We recently featured Tom Corbeil, who has been a critical success in "The Addams Family" musical national tour an Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who is touring in South Pacific in Australia.

The Central City Opera has filled their roster with barihunks for their upcoming production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma." Matthew Worth will star as Curly, joined by Curt Olds as Will Parker and Paul LaRosa as Jud. Performances run from June 30th through August 3rd, with two performances in Denver on August 5th and 7th.

Hugh Jackman sings "Oh, what a beautiful mornin'" from Oklahoma:

The company will also be presenting Puccini's "La boheme" and Britten's "Turn of the Screw." The three bohemian baritones are the enviable trio of Troy Cook (who has appeared Full Monty on this site), Ryan Speedo Green and Chris Carr. Visit the Central City Opera website for additional performance and ticket information.

Gregory Gerbrandt

A month later and about 3,200 miles to the south, Gregory Gerbrandt will be taking on Riff in Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" at the Teatro Nacional Sucre in Quito, Ecuador. Performances run from July 26-29.

Visit Gerbrandt's website to hear his recent recording of Gustav Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. 

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com

Tom Forde in Madison's Sweeney Todd

Tom Forde in Tosca (left)

Tom Forde has been doing a little bit of everything lately. The last time we posted about him, he was taking time off from his ensemble work at the Zurich Opera to play the 7-11 clerk Omar in a Doritos commercial. He's also been mixing in a lot of musical theater work, singing in The Addams Family and Les Misérables.

This season, he'll be at the Madison Opera in both musical theater and opera. First up he'll portray the evil Judge Turpin in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, which runs from February 6-8 at the Capitol Theater. He'll return in April to sing Don Basilio in Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Tickets for both shows are available online. 

If you want to learn more about Tom Forde, you can read an interview with him online from the Madison Opera blog.

Opera news from around the world

Tom Corbeil in opera and as Lurch

Today is one of those days when we have a bunch of miscellaneous items to posts. First up is the Michigan Opera Theater, which we have a special affection for since they managed to survive an economic calamity in Detroit to open their forty-second season. During a time when many opera companies were shutting their doors, MOT managed to raise money and trim some costs to keep opera alive in the Motor City.

They also manage to put out casts which are always of interest to us at Barihunks. They are kicking off this season with Rossini's Barber of Seville. In the small, but important role of Basilio, is Tom Corbeil who returns to opera after a successful run as Lurch in the Addams Family Musical (he's been replaced by Zachary James). Roddion Pogossov and Eugene Chan will share the role of the Barber. There are two other singers that we should highlight, who you want to miss: Elizabeth DeShong as Rosina and Eleazor Rodriguez as Almaviva.

Tickets are available by calling 313-237-SING or online at the MOT website. The opening night performance will be broadcast on WRCJ 90.9 FM on October 13 beginning at 7 PM CST.

"Teddy Bare" and his co-star are in the tabloids again

We're really not an opera gossip site, there are too many great ones out there for us to compete with and we like staying focused on promoting barihunks. However, we can't stop following the Teddy Tahu Rhodes/Lisa McCune romance that's playing out in the Australian tabloids during their tour of South Pacific. It almost seems like the couple is seeking out the publicity, as they keep engaging in very public displays of affection.

You can read the latest story in the Herald-Sun.

Philip Kalmanovitch shirtless as the Don and with Hunkentenor Jonathan Blalock

We keep trying to wrap up the 2013 Barihunks Calendar, but seem to get distracted by pictures of the 2012 models. Here is Philip Kalmanovitch from a 2011 IVAI production of Mozart's Don Giovanni with hunkentenor Jonathan Blalock, another one of our favorite people in opera.

Perhaps this is a good time to clear up any misunderstanding about Hunkentenors. We get a lot of mail asking us why we don't post more on Hunkentenors. The simple answer is it's not our site. We focus on baritones, although we do give the occasional shout out to a few irresistible tenors like Blalock, Noah Stewart, Jonas Kaufmann and Juan Diego Flores.

Sébastien Lemoine

We post about a lot of singers and many are top of mind because the singers, their agents, their publicists or opera marketing departments make sure that we know about their every move. Other singers we chose to follow because you've shown an interest in their careers or they are particular favorites of ours. Every so often, we see someone appear in our analytics under "searches" that reminds us about our reader's interest in a singer. Recently, Sébastien Lemoine appeared near the top of our searches after a long absence from the site.

The former aviator and all-around jock, wrapped up performances in April of Bernstein's Wonderful Town and now is scheduled to perform  scenes from Don Giovanni in Macon, France on November 18th. The performance is part of the Les Symphonies d’Automne Festival and tickets are available online.

For those of you who were searching for Lemoine, thanks for keeping him on our radar!

Canadian Opera's sexy Collines open new season

Hot Collines: Tom Corbeil and Christian Van Horn

The Canadian Opera Company in Toronto has announced their 2013-14 season, which is leading the way with a barihunk filled production of Puccini's La boheme. We often get asked if we post basses and bass-baritones, as well. We post all of the low male voices and actually love when we see roles like Colline filled with sexy bass-baritones. After all, the guys in La boheme are bunch of young, Parisian artists, so we expect them to look the part.

Phillip Addis

The Canadian Opera Company hasn't disappointed us in this regard, rotating Christian Van Horn and Tom Corbeil as Colline. Both singers have been regulars on this site. They've also cast Phillip Addis and Joshua Hopkins as the Marcellos, so barihunk fans should get their tickets now. Performances will run from October 3-30, 2012. Tickets are available online.

Tom Corbeil, who recently wrapped up a tour of the Addams Family: The Broadway Musical, returns to his operatic roots in a big way, as he'll also be singing Swallow in Benjamin Britten's masterpiece Peter Grimes. Tenor Ben Heppner will sing the title role and soprano Ileana Montalbetti will take on Ellen Orford. Peformances run from October 5-26, 2013.

Robert Gleadow

Other operas this season include Robert Gleadow as Guglielmo in Mozarts Cosi fan tutte (Jan 18-Feb 21), Verdi's Un ballo in maschera (Feb 2-22), Handel's Hercules (April 5-30), Donizetti's Roberto Deveraux (April 25- May 21) and Massenet's Don Quichotte (May 9-24).