Paul La Rosa stars in "grave" performance of Dido & Aeneas

Paul La Rosa as Aeneas

Barihunk Paul La Rosa will star as Aeneas in an adaptation of Henry Purcell's "Dido & Aeneas" at the historic catacombs at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. The performance is part of The Angel’s Share, a new series of opera and chamber music concerts presented by Death of Classical at the cemetery. The series takes its name from the distiller’s term for whiskey that evaporates while maturing in the barrel, thus going to the angels.

Paul La Rosa as Aeneas

La Rosa will be joined by the rising star Daniela Mack as Dido, along with Molly Quinn as Belinda, and Vanessa Cariddi as the Sorceress. The opera will be directed by tenor Alek Shrader, and will incorporate spoken dialogue from Christopher Marlowe’s play “Dido, Queen of Carthage." Shrader and Mack are one of many husband and wife teams currently singing on the opera stage. The couple participated with La Rosa in San Francisco's Merola Opera Program for young artists.

Performances are slated for June 4, 5, 7, and 8 and tickets are available online. The catacombs are normally not open to the public.

Paul La Rosa as Aeneas

Each performance will begin with a pre-concert reception with food, drinks, and a whiskey tasting overlooking the Manhattan skyline and the New York Harbor at sunset. At dusk, guests will then follow a candle-lit pathway down to the Catacombs for the performance.

We previously posted about The Angel’s Share performance of the Red Elf featuring bass-barihunk Andrew Bogard and hunkentenor Kyle Bielfield.

Paul La Rosa stars in "grave" performance of Dido & Aeneas

Barihunk Paul La Rosa (Headshot by Nick Granito)

Barihunk Paul La Rosa will star as Aeneas in an adaptation of Henry Purcell's "Dido & Aeneas" at the historic catacombs at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. The performance is part of The Angel’s Share, a new series of opera and chamber music concerts presented by Death of Classical at the cemetery. The series takes its name from the distiller’s term for whiskey that evaporates while maturing in the barrel, thus going to the angels.

La Rosa will be joined by the rising star Daniela Mack as Dido, along with Molly Quinn as Belinda, and Vanessa Cariddi as the Sorceress. The opera will be directed by tenor Alek Shrader, and will incorporate spoken dialogue from Christopher Marlowe’s play “Dido, Queen of Carthage." Shrader and Mack are one of many husband and wife teams currently singing on the opera stage. The couple participated with La Rosa in San Francisco's Merola Opera Program for young artists.

Performances are slate for June 4, 5, 7, and 8 and tickets are available online. The catacombs are normally not open to the public.

We previously posted about The Angel’s Share performance of the Red Elf featuring bass-barihunk Andrew Bogard and hunkentenor Kyle Bielfield.

Introducing Salomón Zulic del Canto; Performing in double-bill in Coburg

Salomón Zulic del Canto in Riders to the Sea

Chilean barihunk Salomón Zulic del Canto is new to this site. He came to our attention as part of a double bill at the Coburg Landestheater where he will sing Aeneas in Purcell's Dido & Aeneas and Bartley in Ralph Vaughan Williams Riders to the Sea.  Performances are on November 17 and December 2 and tickets and cast information is available online.

Composed in 1927 but not premiered until December 1937, Riders to the Sea is based almost verbatim on J.M. Synge’s early twentieth­century drama of the same name. Music of eerie, elegiac beauty illuminates the theme of elemental and watery death as experienced by the Aran Islanders, west of Galway.

Salomón Zulic del Canto sings the role of Bartley, the youngest of Maurya's six sons, who becomes the sole support of the household after her other sons are lost at sea. He earns income by riding horses into the sea to the steamer anchored far offshore, so that they can be sold at the mainland fair. Preoccupied with practical exigencies, he ignores his mother’s request that he not go to sea. He nevertheless asks God’s blessing on the family and rides off on the red mare, leading the pony.

His mother foretells his death and omits the giving of a blessing to him, an omission considered bad luck. When his mother subsequently stands on the path trying in vain to say the blessing, he gives her his blessing. Bartley is knocked into the sea by his pony, becoming the sixth and final son of Maurya's to die at sea.

Salomón Zulic del Canto in Dido & Aeneas

Purcell's Dido & Aeneas is based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid. It recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her. A monumental work in Baroque opera, Dido & Aeneas is remembered as one of Purcell's foremost theatrical works.

Salomón Zulic del Canto joined the ensemble at the Landestheater Coburg this season after two years as a member of the Thüringer Opera Studio. He studied at the Konservatorium der Universidad de Chile and continued his studies at the Musikhochschule Lübeck. As a student, he performed Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème. He was a finalist in the “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartoldy Hochschulwettbewerb" 2014 in Berlin.

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Glen Seven Allen & Edwin Crossley-Mercer