Peter Brathwaite to sing program of music banned by Nazis

Peter Brathwaite

On May 24th, British barihunk Peter Brathwaite will join accompanist Nigel Foster for  "Forbidden Art" at the Alderney Performing Arts Festival. The program centers around Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music), which was music suppressed by the Nazi regime for being to decadent. The concert is being performed in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Hanns Eisler's Serious Songs for baritone and string quartet:

From the Nazi seizure of power onward, these composers found it increasingly difficult, and often impossible, to get work or have their music performed. Many went into exile (e.g., Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Berthold Goldschmidt); or retreated into 'internal exile' (e.g., Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Boris Blacher); or ended up in the concentration camps (e.g., Viktor Ullmann, or Erwin Schulhoff).

The program includes songs by Kurt Weill, a selection of Hanns Eisler’s Protest Songs, and works by Friedrich Hollander and Ernst Krenek, including excerpts from his opera Jonny Spielt Auf. This concert forms a moving testimony to the power of music to overcome adversity, and reminds us that the atrocities of war and oppression are not confined to the battlefield. Tickets are available online.

Barihunks in critically-acclaimed La fanciulla del West

Peter Brathwaite (far left) and Nick Garrett (right) with Susannah Glanville

Back in March we posted about the production of Puccini's La fanciulla del West at Opera Holland Park featuring two barihunks who have been featured on this site, Peter Brathwaite as Sid and Nick Garrett as Sonora. The opera opened on June 3rd to great acclaim and runs through June 21. The company has updated the production from the California Gold Rush to the atomic testing grounds of 1950s Nevada.

Brathwaites's most recent engagements have included numerous world premieres. He made his Dutch mainstage debut last season at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg as Luis in Randal Corsen's KATIBU DI SHON, a role which he will reprise in the Netherlands and on tour to Curaçao. He began the 2013-14 season singing the role of Emanuel in the award-winning operatic adaptation of Marina Lewycka's novel Two Caravans, a portrayal which earned him critical acclaim.

On November 27th, Brathwaite will join accompanist Nigel Foster at the London Song Festival performing "Entartete Musik/Degenerate Music,"  a one-man show about music decried as "degenerate" by the Nazis. The performance will be at the Rosslyn Hill Chapel.

Peter Brathwaite and the Fanciulla ensemble

Nick Garrett is an English bass-baritone. He was a member of the vocal ensemble, The Swingle Singers and the opera band Amici Forever. Garrett was born in London and taught himself to play the piano at age seven. He studied singing, composition, piano and conducting at Trinity College of Music, with further study in singing supported by a grant from the Wolfson Foundation. He then joined The Swingle Singers and toured with them internationally.

After leaving The Swingle Singers, he performed in some of the world's leading opera houses, including the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera, the Scottish Opera and the Opéra National de Paris. He has performed over forty major roles, including the Don Giovanni, Figaro, Colline and Scarpia.