Barihunk Eddie Nelson to perform at historic Maybeck Studio

Maybeck Studio in Berkeley and Eddie Nelson

Barihunk Eddie Nelson will perform at the historic Bernard Maybeck Studio in a special fundraiser for the West Edge Opera. He'll be joined by accompanist Ronny Michael Greenberg, both of whom have close associations with the San Francisco, having participated in the Merola Opera Program and the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow Program.

The performance will be Sunday, May 21st at 3 p.m. with light refreshments, champagne and wine being served. The concert will include music by Duparc mélodies and excerpts from Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet, in which Nelson will sing the title role at West Edge Opera's Summer Festival. 

The historic Maybeck Studio for the Performing Arts was built in 1914 by Bernard Maybeck, the architect of San Francisco's iconic Palace of Fine Arts. Joseph R. Nixon commissioned the building as a live-in studio for his daughter Milda’s piano teacher, Alma Schmidt Kennedy. The studio boasts beautiful acoustics and a long history of hosting world-class performances and recordings. Performances have been hosted there for over 100 years. The house includes two of Maybeck's favorite architectual devices, the Gothic tracery "S" patterns along the balcony and the Japanese-like split eaves on the gables.

Admission to this event is available with a donation of $175 per person, of which $145 is tax deductible. Click HERE to reserve a seat.

Malte Roesner, who appears with the West Edge Summer Festival

In addition to Edward Nelson's Hamlet, the West Edge Opera Summer season will also include the U.S. debut of German bass-barihunk Malte Roesner in Soler's The Chastity Tree.
This is Spanish composer Vicente Martín y Soler's most famous work and is also known by its original title L'arbore di Diana.

Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte created a story from a legend that tells the tale of how Diana, the Greek god of chastity, falls in love with the shepherd Endymion. The plot —halfway between pastoral literature and erotic comedy also praises the political openness of the Archduke Joseph II of Austria.


Tickets and additional information on the West Edge Opera Summer Festival are available online. Roesner is also scheduled to sing a concert of music by Soler and his contemporaries featuring soprano Aurora Perry and tenor Samuel Levine. Details will be announced shortly.

Sneak preview of rehearsal for Marco Vassalli's US debut

Marco Vassalli (left) and Ronny Michael Greenberg (far right)

Rehearsals kicked off for the upcoming U.S. debut of Marco Vassalli with Musica Marin, who is performing the world premiere of the new Clint Borzoni songs for String Quartet & Baritone along with songs by Schubert, Richard Strauss and Tosti. He'll also be performing Samuel Barber's beautiful and moving Dover Beach, one of the few other pieces scored for String Quartet & Baritone.

Portions of this concert were funded by sales of the 2016 Barihunks calendar, so we would like to personally thank everyone who bought a calendar! Every year we donate proceeds to promote young artists and works written for baritone or bass. This year, we plan on funding a special baritone/bass prize at a major singing competition.

Vassalli's debut performances with Musica Marin are on Friday, January 22 and Sunday, January 24 in San Francisco. The German-Italian baritone kicked off rehearsals with accompanist Ronny Michael Greenberg, a current Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera and former participant in the Merola Opera Program. The Sunday matinee is almost sold out, but there are still tickets for the Friday night performance. Tickets for both shows are available on the Musica Marin website.

Here is a sneak preview of them rehearsing Schubert's Nacht und Träume.

Rehearsals for the Borzoni songs with texts chosen by Vassalli begin on Monday with the composer and members of the Musica Marin quartet led by Ruth Kahn. Vassalli chose Hermann Hesse's Stufen and Hilde Domin's Margere Kost, making these the first German language texts set by the composer. Our first charity calendar helped fund a performance of Borzoni's beautiful setting of Walt Whitman's "I Dream’d in a Dream" sung by Randal Turner, which you can listen to HERE.

Borzoni, one of the most talented of many gifted American composers on the scene, recently completed his fourth opera, When Adonis Calls, based on the poetry of Gavin Dillard and arranged by John de los Santos. The opera was presented at Fort Worth Opera’s 2015 Frontiers Showcase. He is currently working on his fifth opera, The Copper Queen, also with librettist John de los Santos for Arizona Opera’s program, Arizona Spark.

Vassalli just wrapped up a performance of Leonard Bernstein's Candide at the Staatsoper Hannover. He grew up on Lake Constance and began his studies at the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne, where he studied with the famed soprano Edda Moser.