Alexander Birch Elliott takes over remainder of Met "Pearl Fishers:

Met's Pearl Fishers and Alexander Elliott

The Metropolitan Opera has announced that Alexander Birch Elliott will sing the remaining performances of “Les Pêcheurs de Perles,” replacing fellow barihunk Mariusz Kwiecien as Zurga. The Polish singer was struggling to make it past the first act, prompting Elliott to step in for at least two performances, the first night being his Met debut.

There are three performances of the opera remaining on November 28, December 1st and 8th. Pretty Yende is set to sing all of them except for the December 8th showcase when Amanda Woodbury wil sing. Javier Camarena will appear as Nadir for all of the shows.

Tickets are available online. 

Alexander Birch Elliot makes unexpected Met Opera debut

Alexander Birch Elliott (Photo from artist's website)

American barihunk Alexander Birch Elliot wasn't expecting to make his Metropolitan Opera debut on Wednesday night. However, there he was on stage for Act 2 of Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles after fellow barihunk Mariusz Kwiecien could not perform after the first act.

By all accounts it was a successful debut. New York Times music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote, "Mr. Elliott tore into the music with heated intensity, his voice a beguiling timbre of mahogany carried by boyish ardor. When he was done, the audience cheered."

The blog Humbled and Overwhelmed, which covers the arts, wrote, "Alexander Birch Elliot was the type of cover that had everyone googling him by the time the curtain came down. What a triumph for him."

There are six remaining performance of Les Pêcheurs de Perles running through December 8th. The cast also includes Pretty Yende, Javier Camerena and Nicolas Testé. Tickets are available online.

Upcoming performances for Alexander Elliott include Belcore in Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore at Virginia Opera and Laura Kaminsky's As One at Portland Opera.

Alexander Elliott takes on Barber in Santa Barbara

Alexander Elliott as the Barber of Sevile

Barihunk Alexander Elliott will perform the title role in Rossini's The Barber of Seville at Opera Santa Barbara, which hasn't performed the audience favorite since 2001. The American baritone will be joined by mezzo-soprano Cassandra Zoé Velasco, tenor Andrew Bidlack and Nathan Stark as Basilio. Opera Santa Barbara’s Artistic & General Director Kostis Protopapas conducts the production.

Performances are on March 2nd and 4th and tickets are available online. 

The Barber of Seville premiered in Rome in 1816 with the title Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione (The Useless Precaution). Rossini's opera recounts the events of the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais that revolve around the clever and enterprising character named Figaro, the barber of the title. Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, composed 30 years earlier in 1786, is based on the second part of the Beaumarchais trilogy.

Other operas based on the first play were composed by Giovanni Paisiello (1782), Nicolas Isouard (1796) and Francesco Morlacchi (1816). Though the work of Paisiello triumphed for a time, only Rossini's version has stood the test of time and continues to be a mainstay of operatic repertoire.

Elliott next heads to the Orlando Philharmonic to sing Manuel De Falla's Master Peter’s Puppet Show. The one-act opera combines puppets and real characters adapted from one of the episodes of Don Quixote. There is a single performance on April 7th and tickets are available online.

Alexander Birch Elliott in Valentine's Day Concert; Returning to Portland Opera

Alexander Birch Elliott at the San Francisco Opera

Alexander Birch Elliott, who is wrapping up a run as John Brooke in Mark Adamo's Little Women today, will be featured in a Valentine's concert on Saturday, February 13th with Opera Louisiane. He'll be joined by soprano Chelsea Basler, accompanist Michael Borowitz and cellist Susannah Montandon. They will perform opera arias, duets and Boradway showstoppers. Tickets are available online.

From April 1-5, he'll sing Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte with the Orlando Philharmonic. This summer, he returns to the Portland Opera Festival, where he will perform Anthony in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and the title role in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. He previously performed Frank in Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus and Belcore in Donizetti's The Elixir of Love with the company.

You can read an interview with him on the Madison Opera Blog.