Luis Alejandro Orozco reprising El Payador at Arizona Opera

Luis Alejandro Orozco as El Payador (Photo right: C. Stanley)

Barihunk Luis Alejandro Orozco will be reprising the role of El Payador (the gaucho minstrel) in Astor Piazzolla's tango infused opera Maria de Buenos Aires at the Arizona Opera. Orozco will be joining forces with director John de los Santos, both of whom have become closely associated with this opera. Orozco has performed the lead role in Lexington, Miami, New Orleans, Fort Worth, Mill City Summer Opera and Nashville.

Performance in Phoenix will be on September 28, 29 and 30, with additional performances in Tucson on October 6 and 7. Tickets are available online.

The opera opens with Duende (the Narrator) who relates the story of Maria, a prostitute born in the slums “one day when God was drunk … with a curse in her voice.” Maria is seduced by the rhythms of the tango and soon becomes “the most sorcerous singer and lover” in Buenos Aires. However, her “fatal passion” arouses the wrath of robbers and brothel madams who shoot her to death, and bury her in an unmarked grave. In death, Maria is pulled into a dreamlike Hell where she encounters the choral circus of psychoanalysts who dissect her to the core. She makes a resurrection of sorts when the Duende summons her to return as a Shadow, give birth to a new Maria, and haunt the sordid streets of Buenos Aires which she once walked.

The opera has become popular in Germany, where is has been performed in apparently every city that starts with the letter "B": Berlin, Bonn, Braunschweig, Biel, Bremen and coming to Bremerhaven in April 2019.

A clip of Luis Alejandro Orozco as El Payador:

Unlike most who contributed to the origins and development of the tango, Piazzolla came from a different background. He was a classically trained, refined musician and composer. Piazzolla undoubtedly made tango available to a wider audience and helped extend its boundaries, both stylistically and geographically. For that, he was equally admired and criticized, but it is almost universally recognized that Piazzolla’s style lent tango worldwide cultural legitimacy, even in what is known as the realm of “classical” music.

Luis Alejandro Orozco and Catalina Cuervo (Photo: Jeff Roffman)

Besides being an extraordinarily talented composer, he was also an exceptional bandoneon player. Piazzolla drew from classical and contemporary sources as well as from the deep roots of tango, creating a powerful synthesis that propelled it from being in some regards a thing of the past to a contemporary language, reinvigorating the style. 

Luis Alejandro Orozco was born in El Paso Texas, but raised in Juarez, Mexico for most of his life. He has performed with such companies as Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Cincinnati Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, El Paso Opera and the Seoul International Opera Festival in South Korea.

Jarrett Porter and Brent Michael Smith featured in Hercules vs Vampires

Jarrett Porter and Brent Michael Smith (taken at Glimmerglass for Barihunks)

The Arizona Opera will present the campy mixed media event Hercules vs Vampires this month in time for Halloween. The production will be performed on October 15th in Tucson, and on October 21st and 22nd in Phoenix. On October 14th, students can receive a special discount for the final dress rehearsal.

Barihunk Jarrett Porter will sing Hercules, while fellow barihunk Brent Michael Smith takes on the dual duty of the God of Evil and Procrustes, the stretcher who hammers out metal.

Hercules vs. Vampires combines opera and midcentury pop culture, synchronizing live music with cult fantasy film Hercules in the Haunted World, a 1961 sword-and-sandal epic starring bodybuilder Reg Park. When the actors projected on the silver screen open their mouths to speak, the audience will hear their lines sung by the cast of the Arizona Opera.

Watch Hercules in the Haunted World in its entirety: 

Directed by the great Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, the film itself is fantastic in every sense of the term, swaddled in glorious early-1960s Technicolor. Action-packed and wildly operatic in scope, the film follows Hercules on a heroic journey to rescue his beloved from a fiendish mastermind of terror, played onscreen by horror legend Christopher Lee.

Porter is a first year Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artist at the Arizona Opera, where he is also appearing as Maximilian in Bernstein's Candide, as Sciarrone in Puccini's Tosca, and as Fiorello in Rossini's The Barber of Seville. He recently appeared at the Glimmerglass Festival as Sam in Oklahoma! alongside fellow barihunk Jarrett Ott.

Brent Michael Smith from the 2017 Barihunks Calendar

Brent Michael Smith, who is featured in our 2017 Barihunks Calendar, recently appeared at the Glimmerglass Festival as Ariodate in Handel's Xerxes and as The Commentator in Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg. This season, he joins the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, where he will sing Ferrando in Verdi's Il trovatore, Fafner in Wagner's Das Rheingold and Truffaldino in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. 

Our 2018 Barihunks Calendar is now on sale and available HERE. Due to customer demand, we have also created a 20-page Barihunks Photo Book, which features additional photos not included in the calendar. It is available HERE. Both the calendar and photo book feature nineteen of the sexiest singers from seven countries (16 barihunks and 3 hunkentenors!).

Introducing Glimmerglass barihunk Jarrett Porter

Jarrett Porter

We recently featured a post about what we believe to be the largest single gathering of barihunks since we started blogging, as about a dozen hunky low voices are currently performing at the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York. A few of the singers in that post have not appeared on our site before, so we thought we'd start with an introduction of Jarrett Porter. 

Porter is currently a Young Artist at The Glimmerglass Festival, where he is singing Sam in Oklahoma! and covering the role of The English Spy in the American premiere of Donizetti's The Siege of Calais, under the direction of Francesca Zambello. 

Porter joins Arizona Opera for their 2017/18 season as a Marion Roose Studio Artist, where he will make his debut in the title role of Patrick Morganelli’s film-opera collaboration Hercules vs Vampires. Other roles with the company will includ Sciarrone in Puccini's Tosca, Maximilian in Bernstein's Candide, and Fiorello in Rossini's The Barber of Seville with fellow barihunk Jared Bybee in the title role.

Jarrett Porter sings Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen":

This past season Porter made his NPR debut with selections from Schubert's Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin with accompanist Taylor Hutchinson, and narration by Graham Johnson and Sir Thomas Allen. He was also seen in recital with Jake Heggie at the German Consulate of San Francisco in a program of Jake's newest works, including selections from his new chamber opera, Out of Darkness. 
 

Jarrett Porter

Recent roles have included the title role in Don Giovanni, Chevalier des Grieux in Massenet's Le portrait de Manon, and Sid in Britten's Albert Herring. He is the First Prize winner of the 2017 Pacific Music Society Competition, the Ellie Silver Award winner at the Holt Competition, and the recipient of the 2017 Pankonin Art Song Award.

Joseph Lattanzi in live stream of The Copper Queen

Joseph Lattanzi

The Arizona Opera will be live streaming today's sold out performance of composer Clint Borzoni's The Copper Queen, which won the company's Arizona Sparks competition for new works in a runaway. The piece was also featured on the front page of the Arizona Republic's arts section last weekend.

The opera's libretto, written by director John de los Santos and based on a true story, revolves around the ghost of a prostitute haunting a historic hotel in Bisbee, Arizona.

The performance will feature barihunk Joseph Lattanzi as Peter Ackerman, who is fresh of a heralded performance as Hawkins Fuller in Gregory Spears’ gay themed opera Fellow Travelers at Cincinnati Opera. This season at Arizona Opera, Lattanzi will also perform the Gamekeeper in Dvořák's Rusalka, Yamadori in Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Dandini in Rossini's La Cenerentola.

Clint Borzoni's "Stufen" with barihunk Marco Vassalli:

The opera also features Lacy Sauter as the prostitute Julia Lowell, Alyssa Martin as Addison Moore, barihunk turned hunkentenor Chris Carr as Teddy Billings, Loren Battieste as Sugar Dog and Zachary Owen as Mr Floyd and Daddy Lowell.  You can hear Alyssa Martin sing "Waiting for a Whisper" from the opera on Soundcloud, as well as Sarah Tucker sing "Still Pretty."

The live stream will begin at 3 PM PST/6 PM EST at the company's Facebook page. 

A Birthday Tribute to Composer Clint Borzoni

Composer Clint Borzoni

There are a number of composers who have had an amazing gift for writing for the baritone voice. In an earlier era, Verdi, Wagner, Poulenc and Carl Loewe all wrote timeless music for baritones. In contemporary times, Jake Heggie and Clint Borzoni have kept the tradition alive, with Heggie writing baritone leads for almost every opera.

Randal Turner sings Clint Borzoni's "That Shadow, My Likeness":

Borzoni has written over seventy pieces, including two full-length operas, two one-act operas, a piano concerto, percussion quartet, work for orchestra, two string quartets, several works for chamber orchestra and over forty art songs.

Much of his vocal writing prominently features baritones, including the two lead roles in his recent opera When Adonis Calls, a leading bass role and baritone role in Antinous and Hadrian, two recent works for String Quartet and Baritone (Stufen and Margere Kost) written for Marco Vassalli, a set of Walt Whitman songs for baritone, the song cycle Awake the Dawn written for baritone Seth Kershisnik, and the song cycle Live Oak Growing written for baritones Tim Hill and Randal Turner.

Marco Vassalli sings Clint Borzoni's "Stufen":

His opera Antinous and Hadrian tells the story of the second century Roman emperor Hadrian and his love for the Greek youth Antinous. It examines the mystery behind the tragic death of the young Antinous. Upon his death, the distraught Emperor declared his beloved a god. Drawing on both historical sources and dramatic imagination the work has been written in the grand opera tradition.

 Wes Mason sings "Two Nooses" from "When Adonis Calls":

Borzoni 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 fifth opera, The Copper Queen, also written with librettist John de los Santos, won Arizona Opera’s new opera competition, Arizona SPARK.

Ryan Taylor takes over Minnesota Opera; Leaves great legacy in Arizona

Ryan Taylor now and in his singing days

Former baritone Ryan Taylor is taking over the Minnesota Opera, after he successfully revived the Arizona Opera. Taylor certainly would have been a candidate for barihunks during his singing days, but he was winding down his career as we were revving up the site. Taylor takes over on May 1 and you can read more on the Star Tribune website. We recently posted about another barihunk, Jason Hardy, who took over the reigns of OperaDelaware.

His current programming at Arizona Opera includes Bizet's Carmen in February with the barihunk trio of Ryan Kuster as Escamillo, Joseph Lattanzi as Morales and Calvin Griffin as Zuniga (and the sensational Daniella Mack as Carmen). That will be followed later in the month by Mozart's Don Giovanni with barihunks Morgan Smith and Joseph Lattanzi rotating the title role and Ryan Kuster singing Masetto.

Another of his great legacies will be Arizona Spark, which workshops new compositions. Our personal favorite is Clint Borzoni's Copper Queen, with a libretto by John De Los Santos. The opera tells the story of Julia Lowell, the ghost that haunts a famed hotel in Bisbee, Arizona, once prominent as a mining town for both copper and “Bisbee-blue” turquoise. You can hear sound clips HERE. The Minnesota Opera also has a long tradition of presenting new works, including composer Kevin Puts' Silent Night, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Borzoni will be presenting two new works in San Francisco next week for String Quartet and Baritone with barihunk Marco Vassalli. Tickets are available online.

Luis Alejandro Orozco takes on Figaro in Syracuse

Luis Alejandro Orozco (photo on left by EMMA)

Barihunk Luis Alejandro Orozco returns to the Syracuse Opera to sing the title role Rossini's The Barber of Seville, which closes their 40th anniversary season. He sang the role of El Payador in their 2014 production of Astor Piazzolla's Maria de Buenos Aires, a signature role that he was highly acclaimed for in Lexington, Naples, Florida and Miami.

He'll be joined in Syracuse by the amazing Almaviva of Javier Abreu, Lindsay Russell as Rosina, Marc Webster as Don Basilio, Steven Condy as Dr. Bartolo, Kathleen Roland-Silverstein as Berta and Angky Budiardjono as Fiorello.

Performances are on Friday, April 17 and Sunday, April 19 at the Crouse Hinds Theater at the John H. Mulroy Civic Center. Next season, he'll perform Riolobo in Daniel Catan's Florencia en el Amazonas with the Arizona Opera. 

Barihunks star in Atlanta Opera's new season

David Adam Moore in Winterreise at the Anchorage Opera

Some of the most popular barihunks in the world will be headlining in a number of performances in the just announced 2015-16 Atlanta Opera season.

David Adam Moore, who is currently performing the title role in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at the Arizona Opera, will bring his critically-acclaimed semi-staged production of Schubert's Winterreise. The production was designed by GLMMR with costumes by Moore's partner Vita Tzykun.

Eugene Opera runs through February 8th at the Arizona Opera and the cast also features barihunk Nicholas Masters as Prince Gremin. Barihunk Chris Carr takes over the title role for one performance on February 7th. Additional information is availabel online.

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Matthew Worth will take on David T. Little's Soldier Songs, which David Adam Moore had a critical success with in 2008 when it was presented by Beth Morrison Projects in New York. Worth is currently preparing the role of Sergeant Raymond Shaw in the world premiere of Kevin Puts' The Manchurian Candidate at the Minnesota Opera. The opera opens on March 7 and runs through March 15.

Matthew Worth (left) and Theo Hoffman (right)

Soldier Songs is an evening-length multimedia event that combines elements of theater, opera, rock-infused-concert music, and animation to explore the perceptions versus the realities of the Soldier, the exploration of loss and exploitation of innocence, and the difficulty of expressing the truth of war. The libretto was adapted from recorded interviews with veterans of five wars.

Moving into the standard repertory, rising star Theo Hoffman will sing the role of Schaunard in Puccini's La bohème in a cast that also features Trevor Scheunemann and Leah Partridge. The remainder of their season included Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance and Gounod's Romeo & Juliet. Visit their website for additional information.

Chris Carr to perform concert in honor of WWI centenary

Chris Carr

After a successful run as Billy Bigelow in Carousel at the Glimmerglass Festival, Iowa native Chris Carr returns to his home state for a recital called "Remembering WWI and its Meaning in Music." 2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of WWI, where over 16 million people across the globe lost their lives.  It was the first real instance of total war, where entire nations were pitted against each other; millions of men fought on land, at sea and in the air; modern weaponry caused mass casualties and civilian populations suffered hardships and came under threat of enemy attack.

The recital will be held on September 14th at the University Center in Quasqueton, Iowa.

In the first half he will be performing George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, Alban Berg's 4 Gesänge, Op.2, Britten's War Requiem arias, 3 French poplar songs, Korngold's Pierrots Tanzlied and the Soliloquy. After intermission, he will perform Léo Chauliac & Charles Trenet Que reste-t-il de nos amours, Les Feuilles mortes (Autumn Leaves) and Sous le ciel de Paris, made famous by Edith Piaf and Yves Montand.

Upcoming performances include The Polar Express with the Phoenix Symphony on November 30th, The Pilot in The Little Prince at the Washington National Opera in December, and Eugene Onegin with the Arizona Opera in February 2015.

Chris Carr awarded Igor Gorin Memorial Award

Chris Carr & Ryan Kuster

The coveted Igor Gorin Memorial Award is being awarded to a barihunk for the second consecutive year, as Chris Carr will be the 2014 recipient. Last year's winner was Ryan Kuster. Mary Gorin created the Igor Gorin Memorial Award to honor her husband, the late Russian baritone Igor Gorin, by financially assisting talented young vocalists at the beginning of their careers.

Chris Carr is the baritone studio artist at Arizona Opera for the 2013-2014 season.  Chris attended Simpson College and the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he studied with and continues to study with renowned tenor Vinson Cole.  He was a district winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in both 2011 and 2012 and is a 2013 alumnus of the San Francisco Opera Center Merola Program. He will be using the award to support his next audition season as he attempts to move from young artist work to professional work.

Chris Carr will be performing Baron Douphol in Verdi's La traviata from February 28-March 9 and Malatesta in Donizetti's Don Pasquale with the Arizona Opera from April 12-27.

Ryan Kuster will perform Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen at the Virginia Opera from March 21 to April 13 and again with Opera Colorado from May 3-11.

David Adam Moore at Le Poisson Rouge

The Inimitable David Adam Moore

Barihunk David Adam Moore will join pianist Inna Faliks and Sandra Beasley are featured at the Music/Words opening at Le Poisson Rouge on Sunday, September 23rd at 7:30pm.

Moore will perform the world premiere of John Eaton's “Songs of Nature ... and Beyond,” a song cycle for baritone and piano. Faliks will also play Beethoven’s Sonata opus 111 in c minor and John Corigliano's Fantasia on an Ostinato.

Le Poisson Rouge is located at 158 Bleeker Street in New York City. Visit their website for additional information or tickets.

Moore can next be seen on stage at the Arizona Opera from November 10-18 when he will perform Mercutio in Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. Click HERE for additional cast information or tickets.

Desert Heat in Arizona: Kaduce & Gregory; Jonathan Beyer Broadcast Tonight

Lee Gregory & Kelly Kaduce Gregory

The "opera couple" phenomenon is getting increasingly popular, especially in Europe where photographers follow around Erwin Schrott and Anna Netrebko like the U.S. press follows around Paris Hilton. One of our favorite opera couples is barihunk Lee Gregory and his equally beautiful and glamorous wife Kelly Kaduce Gregory. Fans in the Great Southwest are in luck, as they are appearing together at the Arizona Opera on October 7 & 9 in Phoenix. Tickets and additional cast information can be found on the company's website.

Jonathan Beyer (photo by David Bachman)

If you're craving some great baritone singing today, check out Jonathan Beyer's recital Sibelius, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, and American songs, which we be broadcast live at WUOT radio in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you're a connoisseur of great singing  make sure to catch this broadcast tonight.

Beyer has taken the opera world by storm by winning opera competitions and delivering excellent recital programs. Check out his record of winning competitions.

• National Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition
• 1st Place Winner at the Marian Anderson Prize for Emerging Classical Artists
• Won the George London Foundation Competition
• Won the McCammon Competition
• Won the Sullivan Foundation Grant
• Won the Irma M. Cooper Competition
• Wont the Violetta DuPont Competition
• Won the Rochester's Classical Idol
• Won the New Jersey Verismo Competition
• Won the Philadelphia Orchestra's Greenfield Competition
• Won the Astral Artist Auditions
• Won the Pittsburgh Concert Society Auditions
• Won the SAI Competition
• Won the American Opera Society Competition
• Won the San Antonio Opera Competition
• Won the American Prize in Art Song and Opera
• Won the Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Competition
• Won the Bel Canto Foundation
• And he's received these additional awards: Gerda Lissner Foundation, Jensen Foundation, Solti Foundation, Charles Lynam Competition, Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation, National Opera Association, Anna Sosenko Foundation, George Solti Foundation, Mario Lanza Foundation, Dresden Opera Competition, NATS, Giulio Gari Foundation, Palm Beach Opera, Jose Iturbi Foundation, Shreveport Singer of the Year, Liederkranz, Orpheus Competition, the Loren L. Zachary, Irene Dalis, Connecticut Opera Guild, and Neue Stimmen competitions.

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Can You Tell Them Apart?

The Arizona Republic newspaper recently ran this paragraph in a review of Cosi fan Tutti at Arizona Opera:

The girls and boys are pretty much interchangeable - can you tell the difference between Guglielmo (David Adam Moore) and Ferrando (Gordon Gietz)? Didn't think so.

I'm not sure that it matters if one can tell them apart. They're both pretty hot and we happily welcome tenor Gordon Gietz to the site.

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