Richard Rittelmann in Golden Gate Opera's 20th Anniversary Concert

Richard Rittelmann, another hot barihunk in bed

The Golden Gate Opera, which is based just north of San Francisco in Marin County, will be celebrating the Diwali Festival of Light with a concert on Sunday, October 30. It will feature barihunk Richard Rittelmann, soprano Shawnette Sulker and mezzo-soprano Alexandra Jerinic. The concert celebrates the 20th anniversary of the company. The trio will sing music from Léo Delibes' Lakmé.

The reception begins at 3 PM and the concert an hour later. Tickets and information is available online. 

The company will also be presenting the West Coast Premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Boy Who Grew Too Fast, which was canceled last year due to a staff emergency. Keep an eye on our site for times and dates. Proceeds from  the opera will used to bring the anti-bullying message to the Marin County Schools. Rittelmann will perform the role of Dr. Schrink, who helps the boy. 

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Richard Rittelman in West Coast premiere of Menotti rarity

Richard Alexandre Rittelmann

UPDATE: THIS OPERA HAS BEEN POSTPONED

Richard Rittelmann, who recently partook in our calendar shoot in France, will be appearing across the globe in the West Coast Premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Boy Who Grew Too Fast. Proceeds from  the opera will used to bring the anti-bullying message to the Marin County Schools. Performances with the Golden Gate Opera are on October 9 and 11 at the Marin Center’s Marin Showcase Theatre.

The story is about a nine-year-old boy who has just moved to town and is mocked by his classmates because of his immense size and his name, Poponel Skosvodomonit.  Miss Hope, his new teacher, tells the boy about a Dr. Schrink, who has invented a shrinking machine. The mother takes the boy to the doctor, who says he will be able to help Poponel reach a normal size but at a price – the boy must conform to everyone else’s actions. When Mad Dog, a terrorist, comes to the school and demands a hostage, only Poponel volunteers. His act makes him grow until he overwhelms the terrorist. 

We couldn't get the ticket link to work, but Golden Gate Opera can be reached at (415) 339-9546 or Info@goldengateopera.org. 

Joshua Jeremian in Barber/Menotti rarity

Joshua Jeremiah

Barihunk Joshua Jeremiah will be playing David in Vital Opera's production of Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti's Four Hands of Bridge! 

A Hand of Bridge--a nine minute opera that briefly, but powerfully, touches on themes of societal expectation, commercialism, marital infidelity, greed, repression, isolation, and loss of love... all over one hand of bridge.  It premiered as a part of Menotti’s Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto on June 17, 1959 at the Teatro Caio Melisso. 

The piece is possibly the shortest opera that is regularly performed: it lasts about nine minutes. However, Vital Opera will present four consecutive performances of A Hand of Bridge by the same cast, for the same audience. Audience members will be encouraged to change seats if they like, in order to gain an additional perspective as the evening progresses. These performances will then be followed by a guided conversation between audience and performers about the whole experience.

Jeremiah will be joined by tenor Brent Reilly Turner as Bill, Jeremy Carlisle Parker as Geraldine and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Panara as Sally. Performances are on April 21 and 22, at 8pm. Tickets are $20 ($15 for seniors and students) and are available online.

 

Indiana University to perform Menotti rarity, The Last Savage

Robert Gerold in The Last Savage (left)

One of the most enjoyable opera productions that we've ever witnessed was Ned Canty's production of Menotti's The Last Savage at the Santa Fe Opera in 2011 featuring barihunk Daniel Okulitch. The comedic opera was premiered around the time of John F. Kennedy's assassination and the country was in no mood for light-hearted fare, rendering the opera to virtual obscurity.

There have been occasional revivals with big names singing the baritone lead of Abdul, including George London at the Met in 1964 and John Reardon at La Fenice later that year. Reardon reprised the role with the Hawaii Opera Theater a decade later, but the opera quickly disappeared from the repertory.

The story revolved around a young anthropology student named Kitty, who becomes quite enamored of a captured savage named Abdul and decides to keep him for herself.

The Santa Fe Opera production caused many people to reconsider its box office appeal, as it was the surprise hit of the Summer. Now Indiana University is reviving the production with two of their sexy barihunk students, who appear on stage for much of the opera in loin cloths. Robert Gerold will perform on November 14 and 21, while Eric Smedsrud takes on Abdul on November 15 and 20.

Eric Smedsrud

Eric Smedsrud is making his Indiana University opera debut as Abdul. The Minnesota native recently completed his undergraduate studies in Vocal Performance at Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wis.  Recent roles include Frank Maurrant in Weill's Street Scene and Sam in Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti at Lawrence University, as well as Herr Fluth in Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor with Lyric Opera Studio Weimar in Weimar, Germany. He is a first-year master’s student studying with Robert Harrison.

Robert Gerold is currently pursuing his Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance as a junior at the Jacobs School of Music. In April 2014, he premiered the dual roles of Retrograde/Asher in New Voices Opera's premiere of Eric Lindsay's Cosmic Ray and the Amazing Chris. Last summer, as part of the Oberlin in Italy Summer Program, Gerold performed the title role in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. He is a student of Andreas Poulimenos.

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Old Maids smitten with a shirtless Benjamin Curtis

Benjamin Curtis (Photo: Lauren Roberts- Wichita Falls Times Record News)

We featured Benjamin Curtis in a post about Lee Hoiby, but it was mostly about the composer and not the singer. After seeing this picture of him in Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief with Opera Breve, we realized that we may have had it backwards. In the post, we featured Curtis singing Hoiby's sublime Private First Class Jesse Givens.

Curtis received his master of music from the Eastman School of Music and was a finalist in the Friends of Eastman Opera competition. He was awarded the Jury Honors award from the Eastman School of Music and the Outstanding Vocalist of the Year award from Liberty University. He was also a finalist in the annual Rochester Classical idol Competition held by the Rochester Oratorio Society.

In addition to the scene from The Old Maid and the Thief, he performed Billy in Carousel with Opera Breve. With the Loudoun Lyric Opera he performed the Pirate King in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance and Peter in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel. 

Opera Breve is a New York-base company that provides young and emerging artists the opportunity to perform roles in the standard and modern operatic repertoire. You can follow them on Facebook or Twitter. 

Celebrating Independence Day with American Opera

American composers Marc Blitzstein and Jake Heggie

American opera didn't happen until more than 140 years after the first opera, Jacobo Peri's Daphne. William Henry Fry is considered the first American opera composer. He wrote the unperformed Aurelia the Vestal in 1841 followed by Leonora in 1845. Most early American composers are forgotten today. Perhaps the first who are remembered today are Walter Damrosch, Scott Joplin, Louis Gruenberg, Roger Sessions and Victor Herbert.

One composer who is largely forgotten today is Harry Lawrence Freeman, an early African-American composer who supported himself and his own opera company during his lifetime and performed to largely black audiences. In 1893, his opera Epthelia was the first opera performed in the U.S., which was written by an African-American composer.

Before the advent of World War II, a number of prominent American composers emerged whose music endures today, including Marc Blitzstein, Virgil Thomson, George Gershwin, Douglas Moore, Aaron Copland and Gian Carlo Menotti. Perhaps the most enduring works from this period are Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts and Gershwin's Porgy & Bess.

William Sharp sings Marc Blitzstein's song "Monday Morning Blues":

Marc Blitzstein is best remembered for his opera Regina, his musical The Cradle Will Rock and his adaptations of Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht musicals, even though he was notoriously critical of Weill for trying to appeal to mass audiences.  Regina is an adaptation of the Lillian Hellman play The Little Foxes. It was completed in 1948 and premiered the next year. The musical style has been described as new American verismo, abounding in the use of spirituals, Victorian parlour music, dance forms, ragtime, aria and large, symphonic score

William Warfield and Leontyne Price sing "Bess, You Is My Woman":

Porgy & Bess features a number of baritone and bass-baritone roles, including Porgy, Jake and Crown. Porgy gets to sing the classic "I got plenty o' nuttin'" and "Bess, o where's my Bess?, "as well as an amazing duet. Jake gets to sing A woman is a sometime thing, while Crown sings "A red-headed woman."

Virgil Thomson composed four operas and the two most popular were collaborations with author Gertrude Stein. He was influential in the creation of what is known as “American Sound” and was awarded Yale University’s Sanford Medal and the National Medal of Arts.

Douglas Moore is unusual,  in that he was most famous for his operas, not his popular music. Although he composed ten operas, his most well-known is The Ballad of Baby Doe. He was a significant figure in both the advancement of American music and music education.  Horace Tabor, who has the best music for a male character, was written for a baritone. His main pieces include "Warm as the autumn light" and "Turn tail and run then."

Michael Hewitt sings "Warm as the autumn night":

The second half of the 20th Century saw the emergence of some of America's greatest composers ever, including Hugo Weisgall, Dominick Argento, Carlisle Floyd, Samuel Barber, Thomas Pasatieri, Philip Glass, John Adams and Stewart Wallace. In 1955, Carlisle Floyd wrote what many consider America's greatest opera, Susannah, which remains in the standard repertory today.

Long before the composing couple of Mark Adamo and John Corigliano emerged, America was blessed with lifelong companions Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti, who wrote some of the greatest operatic works in history. Barber penned Antony & Cleopatra and Vanessa, the latter with a libretto by Menotti. Antony and Cleopatra was commissioned to open the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966 with Leontyne Price and Justino Diaz. 

Eric Halfarson sings the Death of Enobarbus from "Antony & Cleopatra":

Gian Carlo Menotti wrote the most performed American opera ever written, Amahl and the Night Visitors. His impressive list of operas include The Consul, The Saint of Bleeker Street, Amelia Goes to the Ball, The Old Maid and the Thief, The Telephone and The Last Savage. In 1958, Menotti founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy and then founded its companion festival in Charleston, South Carolina in 1977.

The 21st century has seen an explosion of interest in living American composers, including Tobias Picker, John Adams, Philip Glass, Jake Heggie, Mark Adamo, Ricky Ian Gordon, Anthony Davis, Steve Mackey, John Corligliano, Daron Hagen and John Harbison. Philip Glass has been successfully writing operas for 35 years, with such major successes as Hydrogen Jukebox, Einstein on the Beach, Kepler, Satyagraha and Appomattox. He has composed over twenty operas.

Martin Achrainer in Philip Glass' "Kepler":

Although he is far less prolific than Glass, many people consider John Adams an equal to Glass as the greatest living American composer. His masterpiece is considered Nixon in China, which is currently being performed in theaters around the world.  His other somewhat less successful opera is The Death of Klinghoffer.  However, it has received worldwide press attention over the Met canceling the Live in HD broadcast of the opera over concerns from Jewish groups.

Perhaps the modern day wunderkind of American opera is Jake Heggie, who has strung together a remarkable number of operas which are entering the standard repertory. His 2000 opera Dead Man Walking is becoming an audience favorite far beyond the U.S. shores. Of course, we love it, because it has become a major vehicles for barihunks who are portraying the convicted killer Joseph De Rocher. His other successes include The End of the Affair, Three Decembers and the recent hit Moby-Dick.  

Randal Turner sings Tom Joad's aria from The Grapes of Wrath:

But the busiest composer in 2014 has to be Ricky Ian Gordon with his singable melodies. His most recent opera "27" with a libretto by Royce Vavrek is about about the singular world of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. It opened on June 14th at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Three months earlier, he opened A Coffin in Egypt at the Houston Grand Opera, which was written for superstar diva Federica von Stade. It's already had subsequent performances in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.  

Have a happy and safe 4th of July and celebrate some American music! 

Barihunk foursome in Seattle Opera's The Consul

Michael Todd Simpson & Colin Ramsey

Joseph Lattanzi & Steven LaBrie

Michael Todd Simpson will be joining three of the hottest barihunks on the scene in Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul at the Seattle Opera, which runs from February 22nd to March 7. Michael Todd Simpson takes on the major role of John Sorel, Steven LaBrie makes his company debut as the Police Agent, Joseph Lattanzi performs Assan and Colin Ramsey also makes his company debut as Mr. Kofner. We can't remember many instances when there's been this much pulchritude on the stage at one time.

Michael Todd Simpson is also the featured singer on the Seattle Opera blog where you can read an extensive interview with the Seattle based performer. 

Colin Ramsey will reprise the role of Mr. Kofner in a different production of The Consul with Opera Santa Barbara on March 25 and 27.  That production will feature barihunk Joshua Jeremiah as John Sorel.

Happy Birthday, Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007)

Gian Carlo Menotti

For American Independence Day, we celebrated the great composers produced by that country. One composer who is often mentioned as American is Gian Carlo Menotti, who was born in Italy and never renounced his Italian citizenship. He enrolled at the Milan Conservatory at age 11 and when he moved to the U.S., enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music at age 17.

Although he wrote some of the most famous and frequently performed works in the opera repertory, he penned few memorable arias for baritones. Perhaps the best known is "When the air sings to summer" from The Old Maid and the Thief. The piece is rarely performed by major opera companies and is generally seen at conservatories or universities. The aria is occasionally heard as an audition piece.

Brian Rix in a student performance at the Boston Conservatory:

The only other baritone pieces of any note are "Oh, woman, you may keep the gold" from his holiday classic Amahl and the Night Visitors and the Police Agent's aria from The Consul. His most memorable arias were written for sopranos and many are regularly heard on concert programs, including, "Vola intanto l'ora insonne' from Amelia al ballo, "To this we've come" from The Consul, Monica's Waltz from The Medium, and "Steal me, sweet thief" from The Old Maid and the Thief.

Menotti wrote two libretti for his life partner and fellow composer Samuel Barber, Vanessa and A Hand of Bridge, as well as revising the libretto for his Antony and Cleopatra.

In 1958,  Menotti founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. It is devoted to the cultural collaboration of Europe and America and programs a wide variety art forms, including ballet, jazz, choral, folk and opera.  In 1977, he created a sister festival in Charleston, South Carolina, which he led until 1993 when he became director of the Rome Opera.

In 1984, Menotti was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement in the arts. He was chosen the 1991 "Musician of the Year" by Musical America.