There will be two baritone, two bass-baritones and a bass among the 23 singers chosen to compete in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions semi-finals. They will move on to a closed competition on Monday, February 24 for the chance to advance to the Grand Finals on March 1st conducted by Bertrand de Billy.
The low male voices include Brent Michael Smith, bass-baritones Joel Allison and Ben Brady, as well as baritones Blake Denson and Xiaomeng Zhang. The remaining competitors includes sopranos Erika Baikoff, Claire de Monteil, Cara Gabrielson, Courtney Johnson, Chasiti Lashay, Jana McIntyre, Whitney Morrison, Alexandria Shiner, Denis Vélez and Suzannah Waddington; mezzo-sopranos Katherine Beck, Gabrielle Beteag, Lindsay Kate Brown and Katherine DeYoung; countertenor Key’mon Murrah; and, tenors Jonah Hoskins, Joseph Leppek and Joshua Sanders.
Met Opera 2020 semi-finalists
This year’s semifinalists were chosen from more than 1,000 singers who participated in auditions held in 40 districts throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, and who then competed in the 12 regional finals. These auditions are sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council and administered by National Council members and hundreds of volunteers from across the country.
Brent Michael Smith performs "I'm a Lonely Man" from Susannah:
The singers who advance to the Grand Finals will have a week of training with Met musical and dramatic coaches to prepare for the Grand Finals Concert. Each finalist will sing two arias on the Metropolitan Opera stage. Tenor Javier Camarena will perform for the audience while the judges deliberate. Following the performance, the winners will be announced, each of whom will receive a cash prize of $15,000 and career-making exposure.
Results will be posted to @MONCAuditions Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Tickets for the Grand Finals Concert are available online.
Two American barihunks took away three of the top four prizes at the 40th Opera Birmingham Vocal Competition yesterday.
Emmett O'Hanlon took the top prize, as well as the Audience favorite prize. He performed the Tower Scene from Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande and "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's The Barber of Seville for the semi-finals, and Korngold's Tanzlied and the "Largo al factotum" for the final round.
Bass-barihunk Brent Michael Smith took 3rd Prize, singing Purcell's "Arise, Ye Subterranean Winds" and "Vi ravviso, o luoghi ameni" from Bellini's La sonnambula. Mezzo-soprano Lindsay Metzger taking 2nd Prize. The winner also gets a chance to star in an Opera Birmingham production. The company's upcoming season includes Puccini's Tosca and Tom Cipullo's Glory Denied.
The winners were chosen from a group of twenty singers from around the country, which was whittled down to five for the semi-finals.
Emmett O'Hanlon is currently a member of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago. where his roles include Wagner in Gounod's Faust (and covering Valentin), Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and Marullo in Verdi'ds Rigoletto.
Brent will become an Apprentice Artist at the Santa Fe Opera this season, where he will also make his mainstage debut as Lakai in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. He recently completed a stint as a Resident Artist at the Michigan Opera Theatre.
Ethan Simpson(left)and Brent Michael Smith (right)
The final recital in the Academy of Vocal Arts Recital Series will include barihunks Ethan Simpson and Brent Michael Smith in a program of French repertoire. They'll be joined by Gabriela Flores, Hannah Ludwig, Matthew White and Timothy Renner, with AVA vocal coach Audrey Saint-Gil accompanying them on piano.
Ethan Simpson will be singing Nadia Boulanger's "J'ai frappe" and "Chanson," as well as Henri Duparc's Testament.
Brent Michael Smith will be performing Stravinsky's "Un sommeil noir" and the Act 1 bass aria from Paul Dukas' Ariane et Le Barbe Bleu.
Performancesare on April 3 and April 5 and tickets are available online.
Ethan Simpson, Andrew Bogard and Brent Michael Smith
Bass-baritone Andrew Bogard, baritone Ethan Simpson and bass Brent Michael Smith all advanced to the next round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Also advancing at the Middle Atlantic Region auditions in Philhadelphia were mezzo-soprano Gillian Cotter, tenor Matthew White, tenor Joshua Blue and soprano Meryl Dominguez.
A number of barihunks have recently advanced from the Middle Atlantic Region, including bass Patrick Guetti, bass-baritone Brandon Cedel, baritone Sean Michael Plumb and baritone Elliot Madore.
The National Semi-Finals concert will be held on Thursday, April 19, 2018 and the Grand Finals Concert will take place on Sunday, April 29, 2018 in New York City at the Metropolitan Opera House. Bertrand de Billy will conduct this year's concert.
Ethan Simpson will be making his movie debut as Cesar in an
upcoming film based on Anne Patchett’s New York Times best
selling Bel Canto starring Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe.
In January 2018, Andrew Bogard will star as Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute at CoOPERAtive in Princeton, New Jersey.
In January 2018, Brent Michael Smith will sing Fafner in Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Academy of Vocal Arts.
ONLY 22 DAYS LEFT TO ORDER our 2018 Barihunks Calendar, which includes 20 of opera's sexiest men is now available for
purchase HERE.
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 that HERE. The New Year is approaching faster than you think.
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!).
Jarrett Ott, Michael Hewitt, Jarrett Porter and Brent Michael Smith (left) and Justin Austin (right)
Once again, director Francesca Zambello has deservedly landed on our site. Longtime readers know that most opera lovers credit her with beginning the barihunk craze and coining the phrase after having Nathan Gunn appear shirtless in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. Now she may have created the largest single gathering of barihunks ever assembled at the Glimmerglass Festival, where she is the Artistic & General Director, as well as the stage director for Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Donizetti's The Siege of Calais and Ben Moore's Robin Hood.
Norman Garrett in Glimmerglass' Porgy and Bess
There are at least a dozen barihunks who we know of in the various casts and probably a handful more that we've not been made aware of yet. Most of them have appeared on this site in the past. The Glimmerglass artists include:
Norman Garrett as Crown in Porgy and Bess
Brent Michael Smith as the cop in Porgy and Bess; Ariodates in Handel's Xerxes; and the Commentator in Derrick Wang's Scalia/Ginsburg.
Zach Owen as the English Spy in The Siege of Calais and the detective in Porgy and Bess.
Jarrett Ott as Curly in Oklahoma!
Michael Hewitt as Jud Fry in Oklahoma! and Edoardo III in The Siege of Calais
Harry Greenleaf as Cord Elam in Oklahoma!
Jarrett Porter as Sam in Oklahoma!
Justin Austin as Jake inPorgy and Bess
Calvin Griffin as the Undertaker in Porgy and Bess and Elviro in Xerxes
Conor McDonald as Skidmore in Oklahoma!
Eric Shane covering roles in Oklahoma! andPorgy and Bess
The festival opened July 7th and runs through August 22. Additional cast information and tickets are available online.
POST UPDATE: We heard from some of the singers at Glimmerglass that we may have missed a few singers, including Makoto Winkler, Nicholas Davi, Carl DuPont and Adrian Timpau. We also made some casting updates to the list above.
The Michigan Opera has assembled a stunning barihunk trio for their upcoming Carmen, that includes Luis Alejandro Orozco making his role debut as Escamillo, Barihunks calendar model Brent Michael Smith as Zuniga and Harry Greenleaf as Morales. The cast also includes Ginger Costa-Jackson and Sandrea Eddy as Carmen, Marcelo Puente and Alok Kumar as Don Josè and Cecilia Violetta Lopez as Micaela.
The opera will be performed on October 15, 19, 22 and 23. Tickets are available online.
Other engagements for baritone Luis Alejandro Orozco this season include the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni at Bar Harbor Music Festival, Figaro in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia in his house début with Florentine Opera in May 2017, and a reprisal of his signature role, El Payador, in María de Buenos Aires with the Atlanta Opera.
Brent Michael Smith, Jérôme Varnier & Brad Baron
Bass-barihunk Brent Smith is featured in the month of April in our "2017 Barihunks in Bed" calendar which is on sale now. As a Young Artist at the Michigan Opera, he has sung Colline in Puccini's La bohème, the Second S.S. Officer in Weinberg's The Passenger, the Doctor in Verdi's Macbeth and The Speaker in Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Last year he was an Apprentice Artist with Des Moines Metro Opera, where his performance as Billy Jackrabbit in Puccini's La fanciulla del West received critical acclaim by Opera News as a “standout.”
Baritone Harry Greenleaf was a Studio Aritist with the Wolf Trap Opera Company in 2012 and 2013, where he sang the role of Baron Douphol in Verdi's La traviata and Monsieur Barbu in Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias. He made his debut with Michigan Opera Theatre in 2016, singing the role of Top in Copland's The Tender Land, as well as Jake Wallace in La fanciulla del West, and Le Bret in Dr. David DiChiera’s Cyrano.
One of our favorite summer opera festival's recently kicked off, as the Des Moines Metro Opera kicked off their 44th season with a number of barihunks in the cast. Last season, we even featured a barihunk group photo from their production of Puccini's La fanciulla del West, which made our 2015 Best of Barihunks feature in addition to Brad Baron, who was an apprentice artist with the company and our Best Twitter discovery of the year (@BaronAsInRed).
This summer, the company is featuring full-scale operas along with a black box production. The full-scale productions are Verdi’s Falstaff, Massenet’s Manon and Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, which will be running until July 17th at the Blank
Performing Arts Center in Indianola Iowa. The black box opera will be Philip Glass’ Galileo Galileo, which will be performed on July 7 and 10 at the Science Center of Iowa in Des
Moines.
Edward Parks sings Ford's aria from Verdi's Falstaff:
We can always rely on the company featuring some of the most talented barihunks on the scene and this season is no exception, as Verdi’s Falstaff will feature Wayne Tigges in the title role and Edward Parks, a recent Operalia finalist, in his debut as Ford. The gifted soprano Kelly Kaduce will sing the role of Alice Ford. Massenet’s Manon will feature the rising young talent Michael Adams making his debut as Lescaut and Troy Cook taking on de Brétigny. While none of three main characters in Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice are baritones, the cast includes the hot young bass Brent Michael Smith as one of the Furies. The rest of the cast includes Jennifer Johnson Cano in the title role, soprano Susannah Biller as Eurydice and Honorary Barihunk Cree Carrico as Amor. Philip Glass’ Galileo Galilei will feature Troy Cook as the Younger Galileo.
DMMO young artists Nate Mattingly, Brent Michael Smith & Charles Eaton
There are a number of baritones and basses in the Des Moines Opera Appretice Artist Program this season, including Tyler Alessi, Joshua Conyers, Charles Eaton, Reuben Lillie, Brent Michael Smith, Spencer Reichman, Nate Mattingly, Connor McDonald, Ben Schaeffer and Reuben Walker. The young artists will be performing scenes on July 8, 13 and 16.
We are thrilled that Brent Michael Smith will appear in our 10th Anniversary "Barihunks in Bed" calendar. He can next be seen back at the Michigan Opera Theater, where he is a young artist. From October 15-23 he'll be singing Zuniga alongside the Morales of fellow barihunk Harry Greenleaf in Bizet's Carmen. From November 12-20, he appears as the British Major in Kevin Puts' Silent Night alongside fellow barihunk Gabriel Preisser's Lt. Gordon and tenor Chad Johnson's Nikolaus Sprink. Tickets for all performances can be found online.
We plan on featuring some of the DMMO young artists and we'll start with Charles H. Eaton, who recently received his Master of Music degree from the University of Minnesota. In his second year of studies, he was a participant of the ECCO Program, which facilitates hours of coaching and exchange between promising young artists in the School of Music and the music staff at Minnesota Opera. Charles will cover Lescaut in Des Moines Metro Opera's production of Manon and participate in the chorus of Falstaff as an apprentice artist. He is a Rocky Mountain District winner of the 2016 Metropolitan Council Auditions.
Bass-barihunk Brent Michael Smith will be part of the inaugural group of singers at the newly formed Michigan Opera Theatre Studio. He'll be singing Colline in Puccini's La bohème at the Michigan Opera Theatre on Oct 17, 21, 24 and 25. Tickets are available online.
He'll be joined in the program by soprano Angela Theis, mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis, tenor Joseph Michael Brent, baritone Jeff Byrnes and coach/accompanist Gordon Craig Schermer.
Brent Michael Smith sings Mozart's "O Isis und Osiris" from The Magic Flute:
Other roles during his time in the training program include the Second SS Officer in Mieczyslaw Weinberg's The Passenger from Nov. 14-22.Grandpa Moss in Aaron Copland's The Tender Land from March 12- 20. The Doctor in Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth from April 16-24 and The Speaker in Mozart's The Magic Flute from May 14-22.
Smith is a first-place winner of both the Grand Rapids Opera Competition and the National Association of Teachers of Singing Competition: Great Lakes Region.
Two barihunks participating in the Kentucky Opera's Studio Artist Program will be featured in Daron Hagen's socially poignant opera A Woman in Morocco. Joseph Flaxman sings the dissolute English expat Teddy Forsythe and
Brent Michael Smith sings the American businessman Harry Hopkins.
The opera, which is based on the play by Barbara Grecki, confronts the issues of human trafficking and sexual violence and its effect on all of us. Set in a small run-down hotel in Morocco in the mid-1950s, the opera
tells the story of a young, wide-eyed writer, Lizzy, whose involvement
with Ahmed, a worker at the hotel, sets in motion a series of events
which ripple out and impact all the characters in the opera.
On May 6th, you can listen to the composer, the artists and General Director David Roth discuss the opera on WUOL-FM at 11:30 AM CST. The opera will premiere Tuesday, May 12 in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the Festival of Faiths
Flaxman's 2014-2015 season includes, Bello in La Fanciulla del West
at the Munich Philharmonic and the Kentucky Opera, his Wagnerian debut as
Donner in Das Rheingold with the Hartford Wagner Festival, Germont in La Traviata with Bronx Opera, and “all male roles” in Smashed! at the NY Fringe Festival with Opera on Tap.
Brent Michael Smith was at the Central City Opera last year where he performed Antonio in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. His other roles with theKentucky Opera include the
Marquis and Doctor in Verdi's La Traviata and Larkens in Puccini's La Fanciulla del
West. This summer he'll perform Billy Jackrabbit in La Fanciulla del
West Des Moines Metro Opera.
