Régis Mengus in Les Mamelles de Tirésias with notorious nude scene

Régis Mengus and Céline Mellon

33-year-old Régis Mengus opened today in Opèra de Lausanne's production of Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias. The production with sets by Ricardo Sánchez Cuerda and directed by Emilio Sagi is the same one in which barihunk Gabriel Bermúdez appeared nude at the Gran Teatre del Liceu (our most popular post of all-time). From all accounts Mengus also appears nude in the current production. We'll keep an eye out for photos and video! Tickets are available online.

Mengus was a childhood internet sensation long before he became known in the world opera. A few years ago, a video of him with fellow boy soprano Hyacinthe de Moulins singing Rossini's Cat Duet began appearing on blogs and websites drawing millions of views. The performance was with the famed boys choir Les Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois, who were presenting a concert in Seoul, Korea in 1996.

Mengus, who came from a blue collar family with little exposure to the arts, was drawn to music as a young boy. He started piano lesson at the age of six, but joined the choir two years later after realizing that singing was his true passion. Shortly after joining the group, he rose to the coveted role of soloist with the boys choir.  In October 2013, he won both the First Prize and the Audience Award at the International Competition of Singing in Vivonne. In March 2014, he won First Prize, the Audience Award, and a Special Award at the International Competition of Bordeaux.

Next up for Mengus is Karnac in Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys in March and Valentin in Gounod's Faust back in Lausanne.

Barihunk duo in French double-bill

Ben Connor (far left & right) with Gan-ya Ben-gur Akselrod and Julian Henao Gonzalez

The Theater an der Wien is presenting a double-bill of Ravel's L'heure espagnole with American barihunk Tobias Greenhalgh as Ramiro and Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tiresias with Australian barihunk as Ben Connor as Marì. Performances run through June 23.

Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc wrote their respective works with the hope that they would revive the genre of Italian opera buffa in the French language again. Although both operas failed initially at the Opéra Comique in Paris, both became staples of the standard repertory in the 20th century.

Tobias Greenhalgh in L'heure espagnole

Later this year at Theater an der Wien, Greenhalgh performs two roles in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea and Ned Keene in Britten's Peter Grimes. On June 25 and 27, Ben Connor performs the baritone solo in Orff's Carmina Burana at the Wiener Volksoper.

Bevy of Barihunks at Wolf Trap's summer festival

Norman Garrett (left), Michael Adams (center) and Harry Greenleaf (right)

Now in it's 43rd year, the Wolf Trap Filene Young Artist program has featured some of the greatest singers in opera while in the nascent part of their careers. This year, they are bringing back one of their most esteemed alums, Eric Owens, as their first Wolf Trap Opera Artist in Residence. Owens will have a lot of low voice company, as numerous singers who have been featured on Barihunks are performing during their summer festival. Owens will perform in Aria Jukebox with some young aritsts on July 13th. Accompanied by Kim Pensinger Witman, audience members will have an opportunity to select the songs and arias.

Jeongcheol Cha

The first opera will be Handel's Giulio Cesare featuring Jeongcheol Cha as Achilla. He is new to this site (except for a brief mention). The Korean native has been featured in two important opera premieres, in the role of Wu Tianshi in the American premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Kommilitonen! in November 2011 and as Prince Gabriel III in the world premiere of David T. Little’s Vonkensport. He is a graduate of Seoul National University, Bard College Conservatory, and the Juilliard School. In the 2013-2014 season, Jeongcheol was heard at the Metropolitan Opera as Yamadori in Madama Butterfly and as second Watchman in Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Performances of Giulio Cesare are on June 27, June 29 and July 1st.  Other cast members include John Holiday as Cesare, Alex Rosen as Curio, Renée Rapier as Cornelia, Ying Fang as Cleopatra and Carolyn Sproule as Sesto.

On June 28th, Ryan Speedo Green will perform Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Choral Arts Society of Washington under the baton of Bramwell Tovey. Other soloists include soprano Tracy Cox, mezzo Virginie Verrez and tenor Robert Watson. Green was recently featured on our site when his Live in HD performance was canceled by the Met.

Tobias Greenhalgh

On July 19th and 20th, the amazing Steven Blier will join barihunk and part-time Super Hero Tobias Greenhalgh and four other young artist in a "Houseful of Songs," where the audience will be taken through a house and have selected pieces of music performed in each room.

On July 27, accompanist Jeremy Frank will join a sextet of Studio Artists, including baritone Alex Rosen and baritone Harry Greenleaf. The will perform pieces by Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Tailleferre.

Baritone Harry Greenleaf, a native of Wixom, Michigan, is a graduate of Michigan State University where he appeared in several productions, including Mozart's La finta giardiniera (Nardo), Gilbert & Sullivan's the Pirates of Penzance (The Pirate King), Sondheim's A Little Night Music (Carl-Magnus), and Mozart's the Magic Flute (Papageno). In 2013, Greenleaf appeared as Baron Douphol in Wolf Trap Opera's production of Verdi's La traviata at the Filene Center with the National Symphony Orchestra. Harry will begin his Master's degree in voice at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music this fall. Outside of singing, Harry enjoys reading, running outside, and playing racquetball.

From August 8-16, Wolf Trap will feature a French double-bill of Milhaud's Le pauvre matelot and Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias. Regular readers of this site know that we often feature Les mamelles de Tirésias and its barihunk role of Le Mari, which will be performed by Tobias Greenhalgh in this production. The cast also includes Harry Greenleaf as Monsieur Barbu and Michael Adams, who has been featured on this site, as Presto. The title role will be performed by soprano Mireille Asselin. Norman Garrett and Ryan Speedo Green, who have been regulars on our site, are both featured in Le pauvre matelot.

Tickets for all performances are available online or by calling 1.877.WOLFTRAP.

Timothy McDevitt to reprise successful Les Mamelles de Tirésias performance

Tim McDevitt in Les Mamelles de Tirésias

Barihunk calendar model Timothy McDevitt will be performing the role of Le Mari in
Francis Poulenc’s first opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias at La Monnaie in Brussels. He'll be sharing performances with Jean-Jacques L'Anthoën. The production runs from January 16-19.

Les Mamelles de Tirésias, was composed during the Second World War and was based on a surrealist play of the same name by Guillaume Apollinaire. This production revives the arrangement for two pianos Benjamin Britten wrote in close collaboration with Poulenc, a version of the score that has not been played ever since its creation in 1958. By mixing dance and singing, the director Ted Huffman, together with young singers, reveals the poetic madness of this work.

You can check out this short film that was done for the European Network of Opera Academies and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence by Claudia Lee.

We contacted La Monnaie to see if Les Mamelles de Tirésias would be broadcast like their other operas, which you can view for three weeks after the performance. Unfortunately, they said that at this time there are no plans to broadcast the performance. We seriously hope that they reconsider.  Being able to watch their recent production of Thomas' Hamlet with Stephane Degout was a beautiful gift to the world of opera.

"Oh, Towel Boy!": Jonathan Estabrooks in Les Mamelles de Tirésias

Jonathan Estabrooks in Les Mamelles de Tirésias

We recently featured a post about Canadian barihunk Jonathan Estabrooks, who was getting ready to perform the role of Le Mari  in Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias with the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute in Montreal. Poulenc's opera has been challenging Pearl Fishers, Billy Budd and Don Giovanni for the most pictures of shirtless baritones and we're loving it!

Estabrooks' performance at the Salle Claude-Champagne of l’Université de Montréal was no exception. Dressed in exactly one towel more than Gabriel Bermudez in his Full Monty performance, Estabrooks is a welcome addition to the Les Mamelles de Tirésias family of barihunks. 

Estabrooks turned some heads when he appeared shirtless in the 2012 Barihunks Charity Calendar, prompting one soprano to email us, "Who knew?" Estabrooks will also appear in the 2013 Calendar, which should be available for purchase in mid-September. 

You can join his Facebook Fan Page at ttp://www.facebook.com/estabrooksbaritone

Jonathan Estabrooks to perform "Les Mamelles de Tirésias"

Jonathan Estabrooks

"Les Mamelles de Tirésias" is one of the most viewed operas on Barihunks mainly because of the Full Monty performance of Gabriel Bermudez. The opera has become increasingly popular in recent years, including recent performances at the Central City Opera with Daniel Belcher and Long Beach Opera with Robin Buck. 

The famous Emilio Sagi production with Gabriel Bermudez;

The latest barihunk to take on the opera is Jonathan Estabrooks, who will be performing the role of Le Mari with the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute in Montreal. The performance will be at the Salle Claude-Champagne of l’Université de Montréal on August 15th. The performance will be staged with two pianos.

Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias) is a surrealist two-act opéra bouffe by Francis Poulenc, based on the play of the same title by Guillaume Apollinaire, which was written in 1903 but first performed in 1917. The opera closes with the stern command, "Ô Français, faites des enfants!" ("O Frenchmen, make babies!"), and the success of this propaganda is perhaps seen in the fact that the first two sopranos cast in the role of Tiresias had to give it up before the premiere on account of pregnancy.

A Tribute to Gabriel Bermudez

Gabriel Bermudez in our all-time popular post

Every so often we have a post that goes viral, which happened the other day with Texas barihunk Michael Mayes. The post of him after a workout preparing him for "Dead Man Walking" at the Tulsa Opera has been generating five times the traffic of most posts. We often get asked who the most popular singers are on the site and Mayes' photo will catapult him into the Top 10 pretty quickly.

However, no one has ever managed to attract the traffic of the Spanish barihunk Gabriel Bermudez. His shower pictures from Poulenc's "Les Mamelles de Tirésias" [seen above] still generate quadruple the interest of any other singer. Regular readers know that we don't post gratuitous nudity and only feature pictures from actual productions. We have learned one thing about our readers, which is that you do like a little skin once in awhile. To answer a frequent question that we receive, singers who have appeared nude on this site include Laurent Alvaro, Daniel Okulitch, Gunther Papendell, Troy Cook, Christopher Maltman and Omar Ebrahim, whose post is now our second most popular feature.

Omar Ebrahim; Challenging Gabriel Bermudez for our most popular post

Our other popular feature was of Ildebrando D'Arcangelo and Andrea Concetti frolicking around half-naked in Don Giovanni.

All of this foreplay leads us back to Bermudez, who has a bit of a cult following on this site. With his increased popularity, Bermudez has developed a better website, schedule and plenty of new videos to enjoy. The latest being this scene from Carmen.

Gabriel Bermúdez was born in Madrid. He began his vocal studies at the Escuela Superior de Canto in Madrid, under the direction of his mother, Carmen Rodríguez Aragón.  He continued his vocal studies at Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía with the great mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza.

Gabriel Bermudez in La boheme

Bermudez first received major attention when he toured Europe with conductor William Christie and Les art florissants. He then went on to perform regularly with the opera houses in Zurich and Barcelona, as well as appearing in Madrid, Paris and Oviedo. His repertory includes many barihunk roles, including Orestes in Iphigenie en Tauride, Le Mari in Les mamelles de Tirisias, Borilee in Les Boreades, Guglielmo in Cos fan tutte and Papageno in the Magic Flute.

Inva Mula and Gabriel Bermúdez perform Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci" from the Liceu in Barcelona:

As much as he is regarding as a charismatic and intensely convincing performer on stage, he's becoming well regarded as a gifted lieder singer. In addition to the usual French and German repertory, Bermudez regularly includes Spanish language music on his programs by Rodrigo, de Falla, Abril, Toldra and Guridi.

Readers can't seem to get enough of Gabriel Bermudez

You can click HERE to wach the the famous nude scene from "Les Mamelles de Tirésias"

Bermudez is also featured on a number of DVDs and recordings, including Mozart's "La finta giardiniera," Mozart's "Die Zauberflote," Richard Strauss' "Ariade auf Naxos" and Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci."

His 2012 schedule includes a Schubert recital in Santiago on January 3, performances of the Merry Widow in Dortmund from January 5-February 9, an evening of German lieder on March 26 in Barcelona and a return to his signature role of Orestes in Iphigenie en Tauride in Leipzig in June.

Gabriel Bermudez

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com

Video: Daniel Okulitch's Nude Scene from "The Fly"

Daniel Okulitch goes "The Full Okulitch" (Screenshot from Arte)

According to our Google Analytics, two of our most popular posts of all-time continue to be those of Gabriel Bermudez appearing nude in Poulenc's  "Les mamelles de Tirésias" and Daniel Okultich appearing nude in Howard Shore's "The Fly." Until now, we've only had pictures and no video. But thanks to a European broadcast of the opera, we now have some video to share of the scene that prompted fellow barihunks Michael Mayes and Michael Todd Simpson on the Texapolitan Opera podcast to coin the phrase "The Full Okulitch" to describe a full-frontal nude scene in opera.



The Canadian barihunk can next be heard in recital at the Glenn Gould Studio on December 4th in Toronto. You can check out his profile on the CBC website where you can also listen to him discuss his status as a barihunk.

We also highly recommend that you add Okulitch's wonderful recital "The New American Art Song" to your CD collection. You can purchase it at the GPR Records website. 

For the record, the only other barihunk to appear on this site other than Bermudez and Okulitch performing "The Full Okulitch" is Troy Cook. We should use this opportunity to point out that we only publish nudity if it was performed on stage. We have pictures of Leigh Melrose from "Riders to the Sea" and Laurent Alvaro from the French production of "The Fly," but felt the quality wasn't good enough to post. We also hear that there are photos of Eugene Brancoveanu from "Little Caesar," but we've never found them. 

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Trio of Barihunks at Julliard

Drew Santini, Andreas Aroditis & Tim McDevitt

If you don't want to spend the big bucks to see the sexy group of barihunks at The Met, you can head over to Julliard and catch this trio of emerging barihunks. Drew Santini, Andreas Aroditis & Tim McDevitt will be performing in Poulenc’s greatly underrated opera Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tirésias). There are performances on Monday, December 6, Wednesday, December 8, and Friday, December 10 at 8 PM and Sunday, December 12 at 2 PM in Juilliard’s Willson Theater. There are limited free tickets available beginning on Wednesday by calling (212) 769-7406 or visiting www.juilliard.edu.www.juilliard.edu

Our most popular post ever on this site is of barihunk Gabriel Bermudez doing the full monty in a production from Barcelona.

If you need some additional enticement, Tim McDevitt was quoted in the Juilliard Journal saying, "I have four costumes in the opera....none of which involve pants"

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