Barihunk duo in Oper Köln's "Street Scene"

Timothy McDevitt as Harry Easter (right)

Barihunk Timothy McDevitt will be singing the role of the sleazy boss Harry Easter and fellow barihunk James McOran-Campbell will sing the alcoholic husband George Jones in Kurt Weill's Street Scene at Oper Köln.  The production is a co-production with the Teatro Real and Opéra de Monte-Carlo. The Madrid performance featured barihunk Paulo Szot, hunkentenor Joel Prieto and soprano Patricia Racette.

The current production in Cologne features Kyle Albertson and Oliver Zwerg as Frank Maurrant, Jack Swanson as Sam Kaplan and Allison Oakes as Anna Maurrant. Performance run from April 28 through May 16 and tickets and additional cast information is available online.

In 2010, McDevitt won the Lys Symonette Prize at the Lotte Lenya Competition for his outstanding extraordinary artistic promise. Lenya was the widow of Kurt Weill and competitors are judged on their ability to interpret Weill's music.

An overview of Street Scene from the Madrid production:

Street Scene is an American opera with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Langston Hughes, which was written in 1946. It was the composer's first opera composed during his American exile years and is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by Elmer Rice.  Weill referred to the piece as an "American opera." intending it as a groundbreaking synthesis of European traditional opera and American musical theater. He received the first Tony Award for Best Original Score for his work, after its Broadway premiere in 1947.

The story tells of a series of anonymous lives in a big city from a brutally realistic viewpoint. The score contains operatic arias and ensembles, including Anna Maurrant's "Somehow I Never Could Believe" and Frank Maurrant's "Let Things Be Like They Always Was." It also has jazz and blues influences in "I Got a Marble and a Star" and "Lonely House". Some of the more Broadway-style musical numbers are "Wrapped In a Ribbon and Tied In a Bow," "Wouldn't You Like To Be On Broadway?" and "Moon-faced, Starry-eyed," an extended song-and-dance sequence.

James McOran-Campbell (photo: Jane Hobson)

After his run in Street Scene, McDevitt moves on to the music of Leonard Bernstein, when he performs Maximillian in Candide on June 20th with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin with tenor Alex Shrader and soprano Erin Morley. He sticks with Bernstein for his Mass with the Chicago Symphony on July 20th under the baton of Marin Alsop at Ravinia.

James McOran-Campbell will sing Dr. Falke in a re-imagined version of Strauss' Die Fledermaus with Baseless Fabric Theatre in London from August 1-14.

James McOran-Campbell to tour as Belcore

James McOran-Campbell

We've been following British barihunk James McOran-Campbell since our "Men in Shorts" feature two years ago.  He was appearing in Stuart MacRae's Ghost Patrol and we couldn't resist introducing him to readers in his tighty-whities.

He is about to embark on a national tour of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love with the Opera Theatre Company, Ireland's National Touring Opera Company. He'll be singing Sargent Belcore in a tour starting in Dun Laoghaire on November 21st and ending on December 8th in Navan. In between, the comic masterpiece will travel to Dundalk, Galway, Kilkenny, Wexford, Tralee, Cork and Ennis.

The opera will be sung in English with a cast that also includes Anthony Flaum as Nemorino, Anna Patalong as Adina and John Molloy as Dulcamara. The Elixir of Love is a co-production with North Ireland Opera and was nominated in the Best Opera category at the Irish Times Theatre Awards.

Tickets for all performances are available online. 

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Barihunks debut opera at Ruislip's historic Great Barn

James McOran-Campbell and Nicolas Dwyer

Barihunks James McOran-Campbell and Nicolas Dwyer will be part of the first cast to ever perform a professional opera at the 12th century Great Barn at Manor Farm in the U.K. A touring company from Opera Vera will perform Mozart's Don Giovanni on June 28 and 29

The production comes from the Actor's Church at Covent Garden where it was performed to great acclaim in November 2013. McOran-Campbell will take on the title role and Dwyer will play Masetto. 

Manor Farm has been described as a mini-Glyndebourne and patrons are encouraged to pack a picnic and enjoy refreshments on the grounds before the opera. The bar will open an hour before the 7 PM performance.
The remainder of the cast includes Susan Jiwey, Stefanie Kemball-Read, Peter Brooke, Rebecca Dale, Alexander Anderson-Hall and Will Kwiatkowski, Further information about the production or to purchase tickets, visit the Compass Theatre online.  

Men in Shorts

Ryan McKinny (lying down) with Agneta Eichenholz and Marko Spehar (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)

We get all kinds of mail, but the "barihunk in his skivvies" is a regular item in our inbox. There seems to be a lot of it lately, especially coming from the European houses.  The picture above is from the world premiere of Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini’s Der Sandmann at Theater Basel in a Christof Loy production. The opera is based on an E.T.A. Hoffmann story and there are still eight performances remaining. Visit the Theater Basel website for additional information.

On Janauary 29, 2013, McKinny opens as Melot in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto.

James McOran-Campbell in Ghost Patrol (Photo: Jane Hobson)

James McOran-Campbell is currently touring in a Scottish Opera/Music Theatre Wales joint commission of the world premiere of Stuart MacRae's Ghost Patrol, which has scheduled performances in Glasgow, the Edinburgh Festival, the Linbury Studio, ROH and a national tour. They are currently performing in Aberystwyth and are headed to Cardiff, Manchester and finally Mold on November 11. Check out the McOran-Campbell's website for additional information.

Phillip Addis as Demetrius and Ellie Dehn as Helena (Photo Silvia Lelli, Rome Opera)

This summer, Canadian barihunk Phillip Addis appeared as Demetrius in the Rome Opera production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. We're certainly used to seeing some skin in this opera, but it's usually from Puck. In this production, Demetrius and Lysander were also asked to bare some skin and it drew a comment in a review from Seen & Heard International:

Still, there were some fun touches in the staging too. Having the boys strip down to their underpants for the failed mock fight was a fun touch, but to make it work rightly, Mr Curran would have needed more say in the casting. While Demetrius (Phillip Addis) looked as though he was comfortable as a model for underpants, Lysander (Shawn Mathey) did not.

John Allen Nelson

Finally, we have American John Allen Nelson, who is new to this site.

Nelson was a participant in Opera Colorado's young artist program in 2011-2012, where he performed Father in Hansel and Gretel, Zuniga in Carmen, Old Gypsy in Il Trovatore, and Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro. He spent the summer at the Des Moines Metro Opera where he covered the title role in Don Giovanni.     

This season he can be seen singing the role of The Mandarin in Minnesota Opera's production of Turandot.