John Chest as Billy Budd at the Deutsche Oper Berlin(Photo: Marcus Lieberenz)
In celebration of Herman Melville's bicentennial and the 100th anniversary of the posthumous
discovery of the author's unfinished manuscript of Billy Budd, the San Francisco Opera will present Benjamin Britten's operatic version from September 7-22.
This will be only the fourth time that the opera has been performed in the company's history. It was last performed during the 2004-05 season with barihunks Nathan Gunn as Billy Budd, Philip Skinner as Mr. Ratcliff, Mel Ulrich as Donald, Daniel Okulitch as the Gunner's mate, Lucas Meachem as the Novice's Friend, Troy Cook as Mr. Flint and Joshua Bloom as the First Mate.
Nathan Gunn as Billy Budd at the SF Opera (Photo: Merkle)
The all-male cast of 75 principle artists and choristers, will be led by barihunk John Chest in the title role. Chest returns to San Francisco, where he was a member of the Merola Opera Program. Chest has performed the role twice with the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2014 and 2017.
The cast also include a veritable feast of barihunks and bass-barihunks, including Christian van Horn as the evil John Claggart, Hadleigh Adams as Arthur Jones, Christian Pursell as Lieutenant Ratcliffe, Wayne Tigges as Mr. Flint, John Brancy as Donald, Edward Nelson as Bosun, Sidney Outlaw as First Mate, Kenneth Overton as Second Mate, Eugene Villanueva as the Novice's Friend and Philip Skinner as Dansker. The critical role of Captain Vere will be sung by tenor William Burden.
The production will be by Tony Award-winning
director Michael Grandage, who unveiled this staging at the 2010 Glyndebourne Festival and revived it at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music in 2014.
Tickets and additional cast information is available online.
Christian Pursell at the Partners for the Vocal Arts Vocal Competition
American barihunk Christian Pursell won the 6th Annual Partners for the Arts Vocal Competition today in Alexandria, Virginia. Second Place went to tenor Brandon Scott Russell and Third Place to soprano Robin Steitz.
The 2016 Metropolitan Opera semi-finalist performed "Aprite un po queli' occhi" from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and "O du mein holder abendstern" from Wagner's Tannhauser.
Pursell is a first year Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera. This season he'll be performing a number of roles with the company, including Walter Raleigh in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux, the Jailer in Puccini's Tosca, Count Lamoral in Richard Strauss' Arabella, and a fourth of the Angel Quartet in Jake Heggie's It's a Wonderful Life.
Barihunk John Chest is on a roll, having recently been named as the U.S. representative at the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in June 2017 and closing the Opera Philadelphia season opposite his wife Layla Claire in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. To top that off, he was just awarded a $10,000 2017 Richard Tucker Career Grant along with bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee and baritone Anthony Clark Evans.
The top prize of $50,000 went to soprano Nadine Sierra. Winners of the $5,000 Sara Tucker Award went to countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, tenor Alexander McKissick,
bass-baritone Christian Pursell, bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum,
mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven, tenor Jack Swanson, and soprano Vanessa
Vasquez.
Bass-Barihunks Christian Pursell (left) and André Courville (right)
Twenty-three young opera singers who have won regional auditions around the United States arrived at the Met this week to compete in the semi-final round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. The closed semi-final competition, held on the Met stage before a panel of judges, will determine the select group of finalists who will advance to the final round of the competition. Eleven of the 23 semi-finalists are baritones, bass-baritones or basses!
Brian Vu sings Pierrot's Tanzlied:
This year’s regional winners were chosen from nearly 1,500 singers who participated in the auditions held in 42 districts and 13 regions throughout the United States and Canada. The singers arrived yesterday for music preparations for the semi-finals competition on Sunday, March 6.
The 2016 semi-finalists include 23 aspiring opera singers representing various regions around the United States and Canada. This year, there are eight sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, one tenor, one countertenor, seven baritones, two bass baritones, and two basses semi-finalists competing on Sunday, March 6.
Barihunks Sean Michael Plumb (left), Brian Vu (center) and Theo Hoffman (right)
The baritones include Jeff Byrnes (Great Lakes Region: Baton Rouge, LA); Alex DeSocio (Midwest Region: Wichita, KS); Hunter Enoch (Mid-South Region: Paris, TN); Theo Hoffman (Eastern Region: New York, NY); Jin Sol (Eastern Region: South Korea, currently living in Fort Lee, NJ); Sean Michael Plumb, (Gulf Coast Region: Philadelphia, PA); and Brian Vu (Southeast Region: Los Angeles, CA).
Theo Hoffman sings three songs by Jonathan Dove:
Bass-baritone semi-finalists are André Courville (Great Lakes Region: Cecilia, LA) and Christian Pursell (Central Region: Santa Cruz, CA).
Two basses round out the list: Daniel Mirosław (Eastern Region: Warsaw, Poland, currently living in New York, NY) and Anthony Robin Schneider (Middle Atlantic Region: Auckland, New Zealand, currently living in Philadelphia, PA).
The remaining semi-finalists include sopranos Tracy Cantin, Yelena Dyachek, Alison King, Lauren Feider, Felicia Moore, Kerriann Otaño, Christine Price and Ann Toomey; mezzo-sopranos Emily D’Angelo and Samantha Gossard; tenor Jonas Hacker and countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński
The BASS-barihunks Anthony Schneider (left) and Daniel Mirosław (right)
The winners of this event will go on to sing in the Grand Finals Concert on Sunday, March 13 at 3 p.m. hosted by past National Council Auditions winner Deborah Voigt. Each finalist will perform two arias with conductor Antony Walker and the Met Orchestra. Bass-baritone Eric Owens, a past National Council Auditions winner and National Advisor for the Metropolitan Opera National Council, will be the guest artist and perform during the judges’ deliberations once the auditions part of the program is over.
Daniel Mirosław sings the Catalog Aria from Don Giovanni:
At the end of the concert, winners will be announced, each of whom will receive an individual cash prize of $15,000 and career-making exposure. The Met Auditions were crucial in introducing many of today’s best-known stars, such as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Patricia Racette, Deborah Voigt, Nathan Gunn, and Lawrence Brownlee.
Following the semi-finals, those contestants who advance will have a week of preparation with Met musical and dramatic coaches to prepare for the Grand Finals Concert on March 13th. Tickets for the Grand Finals Concert may be purchased at the Met Box Office, by phone at 212-362-6000, or online at www.metopera.org.
