Georg Festl in Pelléas et Mélisande(Photo: Rainer Muranyi)
German barihunk Georg Festl certainly caught the attention of the audience with his sexy, oft-shirtless performance of Golaud in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Theater Freiburg. We thought readers might enjoy seeing a few of the pictures, since the run ended on July 20. This was his role debut.
For those not familiar with the piece, the opera is tragic love triangle involving two noble half-brothers, Golaud and Pelléas, and the enigmatic Mélisande, who comes into their lives unexpectedly after a tremendous and undisclosed personal calamity. She marries Golaud, but he is soon convinced of her illicit union with his brother, and his jealous rage ends in Pélleas’ murder. Mélisande dies after giving birth to a child.
Georg Festl in Pelléas et Mélisande(Photo: Rainer Muranyi)
Festl make his house debut at the Opernhaus Zürich next Spring as Masetto in Don Giovanni in a cast led by fellow barihunk Luca Pisaroni in the title role, Andreas Wolf as Leporello, Wenwei Zhang as the Commendatore, Jane Archibald as Donna Anna, Sine Bundgaard as Donna Elvira, Mauro Peter as Don Ottavio and Natalia Tanasi as Zerlina.
Georg Festl was born in Nuremberg, Germany and studied English and American studies at the University of Music Würzburg. After graduating, he was cast as Artie Green in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard at the Mainfrankentheater Würzburg. He is a recipient of the Richard-Wagner Society scholarship and the Da-Ponte Society scholarship
Hadleigh Adams and Heather Buck(photo: Cory Weaver)
Bass-barihunk Hadleigh Adams will headline this year's West Edge Opera Summer Festival in Luca
Francesconi’s Quartett, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. The enigmatic
and controversial opera is based on the play by the [East] German playwright Heiner Muller, which emphasized the author's abiding concerns, including the inherent cruelty of human existence, the way all relationships ultimately come down to struggles for possession and defeat of "the other."
Elkhanah Pulitzer will direct three performances of the opera on August 11, 16 and 19 at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, California, which is a former Ford assembly plant on the San Francisco Bay designed by the legendary industrial architect Albert Kahn. West Edge Opera has become renowned for their choice of unusual and interesting locations to stage their operas.
Hadleigh Adams will perform the role of the Vicomte de Valmont, joined by soprano Heather Buck as the Marquise de Merteuil. The Marquise de Merteuil and the Viscount de Valmont are trapped in a salon having renounced all sense of love and play seductive mind games taking on the roles of the lovers Tourvel and Volanges. Hence, the title Quartett.
The Seduction Scene from Quartett at La scala:
Composer Luca Francesconi described the piece as a challenge to our ideas of opera, of society, of the dominance of Western thinking: “Don’t dare to come if you can't accept that you need to analyze what you do and who you are. This piece is violent, it’s sex, it’s blasphemy, it’s the absence of mercy.”
The opera was originally commissioned
by La Scala and has since been performed at the Royal Opera in London, Vienna, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Rouen, and at the Spoleto Festival. The score features two orchestras: a live chamber orchestra with
electronics, and a recorded full orchestra and chorus created for the La
Scala Premiere.
The remainder of the season includes Claude Debussy’s lone opera Pélleas and Mélisande, with tenor David Blalock and Kendra Broom in the title roles, along with Efrain Solis as Golaud, contralto Malin Fritz as Geneviéve, and bass-baritone Philip Skinner singing the role of King Arkel. Performances are on August 4, 12 and17
The final offering is Matt Marks and Paul Peers’ Mata Hari, which originally premiered at the New York’s Prototype Festival in January of 2017. The cast includes mezzo-soprano Molly Mahoney as Sister Leonide, tenor Samuel Faustine as Vadime, and Daniel Cilli, Nikolas Nackley and Jason Sarten as the military men that become Mata Hari’s lovers and targets. Performances are on August 5, 10 and 18.
After Quartett, Hadleigh Adams returns to his home base at the San Francisco Opera to sing Angelotti in Puccini's Tosca this Fall with Carmen Giannattasio in the title role and tenor Brian Jagde as her lover.
Dominik Köninger (foreground) and Günter Papendell (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)
Classical music writer Catherine Kustanczy, a.k.a. The Opera Queen, interviewed barihunk Dominik Köninger and asked him about being on Barihunks. He responded, "This is really flattering, I have to say. I was and am always flattered when I read things about me. Those guys are ripped!" You can read the entire interview HERE.
You can also watch him in a live stream of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande from the Komische Oper on OperaVision.eu on Sunday, October 15th at 6:00 PM CET/1 PM EST/10 AM PST. If you can't watch it live, the performance will be available until April 14th. Köninger will sing Pelleas and fellow barihunk Günter Papendell will sing Golaud.
Zachary Gordin and Gianluca Margheri
Our 2018 Barihunks Calendar, which includes 20 of opera's sexiest men is now available for purchaseHERE.
In response to reader demand, we've also added a Barihunks Photo Book
this year, which includes additional photos that don't appear in the
calendar. You can purchase thatHERE. The New Year is approaching faster than you think!
Barihunk Jonathan McGovern is making a major role and house debut this season, beginning with his first performance of the title role in Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao.
The opera tells the story of Orfeo's descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua and is considered the earliest opera that is still regularly performed. Performances are on May 5th and 6th and tickets are available online.
This summer, he will make his company debut with the Garsington Opera in the title role of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Andrea Carroll will sing the role of Mélisande and Paul Gay is Golaud. The British singer performed the role last season with English Touring Opera. Performances run from June 16th through July 7th and tickets and additional cast information is available online.
Luke Scott (left) and David Castillo (right) (Photo Maria Baranova)
After sold-out performances on both coasts, ¡Figaro! (90210) is back at The Duke on 42nd Street in New York's Times Square until April 23rd.
The opera is an updated and rewritten version of Mozart'sLe nozze di Figaroabout class and power. The piece is set in present-day Los Angeles (with a Trump Tower gag thrown in for New York audiences) and filled with pop references, contemporary slang and includes current topics like immigration reform and income inequality.
David Castillo, who we recently featured in his successful run as Anthony Hope in Townsend Opera'sSweeney Todd, will reprise the role of the stoner Atzuko. (Don't miss ourinterview with him). He's joined by barihunk Luke Scott as Paul Conti, hunkentenor Michael Kuhn as Basel, Jose Adan Perez as Figaro, actor Christin Byrdsong as Lil B-Man, Ethan Herschenfeld as Babayan, Lori Mirabal as Donna, Sahoko Sato Timpone as Ms. Soon-Yi Nam, Emma Grimsley as Barbara Conti, Raquel Suarez-Groen as Roxanne Conti and Samarie Alicia as Susana.
Actor Christin Byrdsong (Photo Maria Baranova)
The libretto is in English and "Spanglish" and is about the undocumented workers Figaro and Susana who can't wait to get married. On their way to the altar they have to navigate a world of lecherous bosses, Botoxed starlets, bumbling human traffickers, ambitious hip-hoppers, and pothead gardeners in a wild adventure that recasts the classic opera as a madcap comedy about citizenship in today's America. Tickets are available at Figaro90210.com where you can use the discount code "GOGOFIGARO." Castillo next appears as the Doctor and Shepherd in Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande with the Cleveland Orchestra from May 2-6 under the baton of Franz Welser-Most. Fellow barihunks Elliot Madore and Hanno Müller-Brachmann will sing the roles of Pelleas and Golaud respectively. Tickets are available online.
American barihunk Edward Nelson will make his European debut at the Norwegian National Opera on April 7th in the title role of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.
Pelléas et Mélisande was the composer’s only opera and is based on the Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck’s play of the same name. The story is about lost love and forbidden relationships.
Remarkably, this will be the first time that the opera has ever been performed at the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet. The new production will be directed by Australian Simon Stone, who takes the audience into a closed, tightly-controlled world of dark family secrets, deep chasms, and light, young love.
There are six performances, which run until April. 30th. Ingeborg Gillebo will sing Mélisande every night except opening night, when the role will be sung by Susanna Hurrell. Paul Gay will sing Golaud. Tickets are available online.
Nelson, who just finished his two-year stint at the prestigious Adler Fellow Program under the auspices of the San Francisco Opera, will perform the title role of Hamlet with West Edge Opera in Ambroise Thomas' opera from August 5-19. Fellow barihunk Kenneth Kellogg will appear as the ghost.
Kyle Ketelsen, Corinne Winters and Jacques Imbrailo
Barihunks Jacques Imbrailo and Kyle Ketelsen are starring in the Zürich Opera's production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, whichRussian director Dmitri Tcherniakov has set in a contemporary living room and dining room. This marks Imbrailo's debut with the company.
Corinne Winters and Kyle Ketelsen
Tcherniakov opts to view Debussy's symbolic opera through the lens of Freudian analysis. Ketelsen's Golaud is portrayed as a psychoanalyst who has brought his
patient, Mélisande, home for more intensive analysis after finding her
weeping in the forest. This production makes Golaud very much the center of focus in the opera. Golaud never learns the reason for Mélisande’s melancholy, nor where she comes from, but she exerts a great
fascination over him and he videotapes her therapy.
For those not familiar with the piece, the opera is tragic love
triangle involving two noble half-brothers, Golaud and Pelléas, and the enigmatic
Mélisande, who comes into their lives unexpectedly after a tremendous
and undisclosed personal calamity. She marries Golaud, but he is soon
convinced of her illicit union with his brother, and his jealous rage
ends in Pélleas’ murder. Mélisande dies after giving birth to a child.
Tickets and additional cast information is available online.
Marco Vassalli in the Loire Valley (left) and as Pelléas in Osnabrück (right)
It's not just Wagnerian Christine Goerke making last minute splashes in big roles, as barihunk Marco Vassalli stepped in at the last minute last night as Pelléas at the Landestheater Linz for the ailing Iurie Ciobanu. The production of Debussy's Pelléas and Mellisande also features fellow barihunk Ville Lignell.
Vassalli, whose voice is perfectly suited to the role of Pelléas, last performed the role at the Stadttheater Osnabrück in the winter of 2010. He's currently in the midst of a run of Roman Cycowski's Die Comedien Harmonists. You can also read about upcoming debut in Sweat of the Sun in a previous post. The opera runs from May 28-31.
On June 12, he can be heard in a lieder recital at the Museumssaal Überlingen featuring the music of Schumann and Wolf. Next season he returns to the Staatsoper Hannover for a reprisal of Leonard Bernstein's Candide.
There are three remaining performances left of Pelléas and Mellisande on May 20 and 24, and June 27. Tickets and additional information is available online.
Ville Lignell, who is part of the ensemble at the Landestheater Linz, can be seen there in The Merry Widow, McTeague and La traviata.
Two barihunks will be features in the inaugural season of Floating Opera New York when they feature Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande on the water in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Christopher Herbert will sing Pelleas, while Sidney Outlaw takes on Golaud. Also in the cast are Aude Cardona as Melisande, Paul Goodwin-Groen as
Arkel, Jasmin DeRice as Genevieve and Caroline Loeb as Yniold.
The opera will be set on the railroad barge, Lehigh Valley No. 79, also known as The Waterfront Barge Museum. It will will be sung in English and presented with Debussy's original 1895 piano score.
The railroad barge and Sidney Outlaw
Performances of Pelleas and Melisande are October 16, 17 and 18 at 8 pm.
The barge is moored at 290 Conover in Red Hook. Directions and additional production information can be found online. Next Spring, the company will produce the New York premiere of
John Cage's Europeras 3 & 4.
If you can't wait until October, you can hear Chris Herbert perform his doctoral recital at The Julliard School on September 22 at 6 PM. He'll perform songs by Britten, Bernstein, Rorem, Kaminsky and DeBlasio.
The Bavarian State Opera's free live streams atSTAATSOPER.TV continue from Munich on July 4th at 7 PM CET/2 PM EST/11 AM PST with Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.
The cast includes barihunks Elliot Madore as Pelleas and Markus Eiche as Goulaud, as well as soprano Elena
Tsallagova as Melisande. Later this year the duo appear together again in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, with Madore as Harlekin and Eiche as the Music Instructor.
Markus Eiche studied at the Music Academy of Stuttgart and went on to win the 1998 the International Singing Competition ”Francesco Viñas” in Barcelona. He has become a regular at both the Vienna State Opera and the Bavarian State Opera. Upcoming roles in Munich include Lescaut in Manon Lescaut, Gunther in Gotterdammerung, Marcello in La boheme and the Count in Le nozze di Figaro.
Elliot Madore, a native of Canada, has been singing primarily in Europe since becoming part of the ensemble at the Zurich Opera. However, he'll be appearing on both US coasts this year, starting on September 12 when he sings Antony Hope in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd at the San Francisco Opera with Gerald Finley and Stephanie Blythe. In December, he'll head east to appear at the Metropolitan Opera opposite Isabel Leonard and David Portillo in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia .
Barihunk lovers should be alerted that from May 8-29, 2016 at the Opernhaus Zürich, Pelléas et Mélisande will be performed with the barihunk trio of Jacques Imbrailo as Pelléas, Kyle Ketelsen as Goulaud and Eric Anttine as the Doctor.
