R.I.P Glen Roven (1958-2018): Composer, Conductor, Arranger, Producer, Two-time Emmy Award-winner

Glen Roven

The Barihunks family lost one of its favorite people in the music industry this week, Glen Roven, a multi-talented composer, conductor, arranger, producer and two-time Emmy Award-winner. He was a fan of our site from day one and always dreamed of producing a barihunk concert, which he recently accomplished when he joined Steven Labrie, Jarrett Ott and Tobias Greenhalgh at Carnegie Hall.

Roven was a tireless promoter of music across all genres, including for his beloved friend Florence Henderson, as well as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Julie Andrews, Melissa Etheridge, Aretha Franklin, Leon Fleisher, Kenny G., Whitney Houston, Dick Hyman, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Kermit the Frog, Patti LaBelle, Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, Paul Shaffer, Martin Short, TRAIN and others.

His collection of three-dozen song cycles and art songs are performed all around in the world, including concerts by Daniel Okulitch, who would devote a half-program to his music and Mark Stone who performed an all-Roven set at Carnegie Hall. He loved translating great works into English and wrote a version of Schubert's Winterreise for David Adam Moore and had his English version of Mahler's Kindertodenlieder performed by Christopher Herbert. Randal Turner made his West Coast recital debut singing Roven's "Four Melancholy Songs, Opus 16, No. 1" based on poetry by William Butler Yeats. The list is endless, which is a testament to his prolific abilities.

Daniel Okulitch recorded "Stop all the Clocks" from Roven's "Songs From the Underground," based on Auden's famous poem in 2011. However, Roven could never perform the piece again after his partner Robin died as he got too emotional. You can listen to Okulitch and Roven perform it HERE.

When we met with Roven in New York in 2015, he was about to premiere Songs That Make Grown Men Cry, Opus 41, based on texts from a collection of poetry edited by Anthony Holden and Ben Holden. The concert featured barihunks Jonathan Hare, Kenneth Kellogg and Jarrett Ott along with the NY New Music Collective and tenors Andrew Fuchs, Glen Seven Allen and Myles Mykkanen and a choral quartet. He would tear up whenever talking about the text.

Speaking of text, Roven had an undying love and devotion to poetry, and produced "Poetic License: 100 Poems/100 Performers," which became the best selling poetry album of all time.  The album included readings by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Patti LuPone, Jason Alexander, Cynthia Nixon, Florence Henderson, Christine Baranski, Brent Barrett, Barry Humphries, Daniel Okulitch, Tyne Daly, Doug Carpenter and Glenn Seven Allen.

After the election of Donald Trump, the composer needed a way to channel is anger, so he wrote The Hillary Speeches, based on the announcement of her candidacy on January 7, 2007, and her presidential concession speech on November 9, 2017. The concert was streamed from the National Sawdust and included performances by David Adam Moore, Kyle Ketelsen, Nathan Gunn, Sidney Outlaw, Daniel Sumegi, Lester Lynch, Andrew Garland, Michael Kelly, Isabel Leonard, Patricia Racette, Lawrence Brownlee, Matthew Polenzani, Carin Gilfy, Laquita Mitchell, Glenn Seven Allen, Dominic Armstrong, Jonathan Blalock and others.

Roven also tirelessly devoted his time to penning music for charitable causes, including "An AIDS Quilt Songbook: Sing for Hope," a recording that raised funds for amfAR and featured Joyce DiDonato, Jamie Barton, Isabel Leonard, Matthew Polenzani, Susanne Phillips Yo-Yo Ma, Ansel Elgort, Sharon Stone and others.

One of our favorite compositions by Roven is a setting of wine tasting notes that was written for bass Aaron Sorensen and performed in California's Sonoma County wine region.

Roven was always busy doing something, and at the time of his death, he was at work on a new movie-musical for Dolly Parton for Netflix, had just completed his "Symphony of Songs," penned a new opera called Addressee Unknown, wrote a new Broadway Musical World War Me, and produced an all-Verdi aria CD for Hui He.

A funeral service will be held Friday, July 27th at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 West 76th Street in New York City at 11 AM, with a memorial tribute being planned for Fall 2018.

Barihunk Gerd Grochowski dies day after singing Wotan

Death notice from Gerd Grochowski's website

German barihunk Gerd Grochowski died of a heart attack 17 hours after performing Wotan at the Wiebaden Opera. He had received a rousing ovation from the audience and no one noticed anything unusual with his health.

Gerd Grochowski sings "Wo du bist?" from Tristan und Isolde:

Grochowski was a Wagner specialist who had performed Telramund and Heerrufer in Lohengrin, the title role in The Flying Dutchman, Wotan in The Ring, the Wanderer in Siegfried, Gunther in Götterdämmerung, Kurwenal in Tristan and Isolde and Amfortas and Klingsor in Parsifal. His breakthrough came with his debut at New York’s Metropolitain Opera as Kurwenal in Tristan and Isolde led by Daniel Barenboim. He performed at many of the world's greatest opera houses and festivals including the San Francisco Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, La Scala, Festival Aix-en-Provence, Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Salzburg Festival.

After Sunday's performance, he told his daughter "Nur eines will ich noch, das Ende," which translates to: "There is but one thing left I desire, the end."

R.I.P. Franck Ferrari

It is with great sadness that we report the death of French baritone Franck Ferrari at the age of 52 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

In March 2014, he withdrew from Chausson's Le Roi Arthus at Strasbourg's l'Opéra national du Rhin to deal with his illness. His career took him to the major houses or Europe, where performed Scarpia at the Paris Opera, Berlin and in Strasbourg, Sharpless in Toulon, Thoas in Iphigenie en Tauride in Madrid, and Escamillo in Avenches, Turin and at the Hollywood Bowl. He had a particular love for appearing in rarely performed works including Karnac in Lalo's Le Roi d'Y's and Napoléan in Giordano's Madame Sans-Gene. He performed over 30 roles at the two main opera houses in Paris.

He studied at the conservatory in his hometown of Nice winning top prizes at vocal competitions in Marseille, Paris and Toulouse.

He leaves behind his wife and three children. 

R.I.P. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012)

The esteemed Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has died at age 86. Known throughout the world for his romantic Lieder interpretation, he died just 10 days before of his 87th birthday.

German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died on Friday, just shortly before his 87th birthday, his wife, Julia Varady, announced.

Fischer-Dieskau was one of the most famous 'Lieder' performers in post-war Europe. He also had success as an opera singer, music teacher and aspiring novelist.

Fischer-Dieskau’s name will forever be linked to his interpretations of Franz Schubert’s “Winterreise."

Born in 1925 in Berlin, Fischer-Dieskau retired from singing in 1992.

Among the many highlights of his career was his participation in the world premier of Benjamin Britten’s "War Requiem" at the inauguration of the new Coventry Cathedral in the UK in 1962.

CCM Student Mark Wesley Brax Dies in Car Crash

Mark Wesley Brax

We hate to deliver sad news, but we just learned that University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) student Mark Wesley Brax, age 23, was killed in a two-vehicle crash in southeastern Indiana over the weekend.

Brax had spent the summer at the Tanglewood Festival before coming to CCM to receive his master's degree. Since arriving at the College-Conservatory of Music, Brax had performed as soloist in J.S. Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” participated in the undergraduate production of Handel’s “Serse” and sang with the CCM Chamber Choir and the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati.

Robin Guarino, chair of the opera department at CCM, said the aspiring opera singer was “an exceptional artist and an inspiration to all. We are heartbroken at this loss, and send our love to his family and all those who knew him.”


The school held an informal memorial on Monday for students, faculty and staff.

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com

R.I.P. - Todd Donovan

Todd Donovan

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of baritone and arts administrator Todd Donovan.

Opera and classical music fans in the San Francisco Bay area will remember him for the many hats that he wore with great distinction. First, as a lyric baritone who performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Philhamonia Baroque Orchestra, Lamplighters Music Theater, Eugene Opera, Nevada Opera and others. He then went on to work in arts administration and development for the San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Grammy-nominated Cypress String Quartet.

He will be greatly missed. 

You can read his complete obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle.

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com

NY Times: Cornell MacNeil, Verdi Baritone at the Met, Dies at 88

Cornell MacNeil (AP)

By JONATHAN KANDELL

Cornell MacNeil, one of the great postwar American baritones, best known for his roles in Verdi operas, died on Friday in Charlottesville, Va. He was 88.

His death was announced by his wife, Tania. Mr. MacNeil had been living in an assisted-living facility in Charlottesville.

A pure baritone with power from low to high notes, he was considered the equal of Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill, the other stellar American Verdi baritones during the second half of the 20th century.

From 1959 to 1987, he sang 26 roles in more than 600 appearances at the Metropolitan Opera alone. But he reached his peak in his Verdi performances.

“The larger and more complex the part, the better he was,” James Levine, the Met’s longtime conductor, said of Mr. MacNeil’s Verdi roles in a 2007 interview with Opera News. “Boccanegra, Rigoletto, Macbeth, Nabucco, Falstaff, Iago — a lot of these parts could be said to be the most challenging and varied.” Referring to characters in “Aida” and “Tosca,” Mr. Levine continued, “He sang lots of Amonasros and Scarpias marvelously well, but those more complex ones were where he was at his best.”



Though not known as a temperamental artist, Mr. MacNeil was remembered for a spectacular public outburst when he stormed off the Parma Opera stage in Italy on Dec. 26, 1964. It happened during “Un Ballo in Maschera,” when the Parma audience, notorious for rude displays of disapproval, hissed at the soprano Luisa Maragliano just as Mr. MacNeil was about to sing the aria “Eri tu.”

“I was getting more and more angry as the rumbling and noise got worse,” he told The New York Times the following day. “I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Basta, cretini!’ I shouted and walked off the stage.” (His words meant “That’s enough, you idiots!”)

The situation grew worse in his dressing room, where the stage director warned him to return to the performance because he had his family’s safety to consider. Refusing to go back onstage, Mr. MacNeil sent his wife and children to their hotel. But when he made his way to the back entrance, he was assaulted by theater employees. “During the scuffle, I got socked on the jaw,” Mr. MacNeil said, displaying a bruised chin during his Times interview. The following day the MacNeils fled Parma.
Cornell MacNeil was born on Sept. 24, 1922, in Minneapolis, where his father was a dentist and his mother a singer who had studied with the celebrated contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink. Though interested in an operatic career from an early age, Mr. MacNeil suffered from asthma until he was 20. It was severe enough to get him rejected by the military draft during World War II. He took a wartime job as a lathe operator, and then, on his mother’s advice, studied with the retired baritone Friedrich Schorr at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford.

Before the war ended, Mr. MacNeil joined the Radio City Music Hall Glee Club and also did backstage announcements. It was his sonorous baritone that announced the news to Radio City audiences of both the German and Japanese surrenders.

 

Mr. MacNeil made his opera debut when, after a brief vocal audition, the composer and director Gian Carlo Menotti immediately decided to cast him as the male lead in “The Consul,” which opened on March 1, 1950, at the Shubert Theater in Philadelphia. “The Consul,” the first full-length opera composed by Menotti, won the Pulitzer Prize in music that year. Still a raw talent, Mr. MacNeil took voice lessons over the next two years while working nights at the Bulova Watch factory in Queens.
In 1953 Mr. MacNeil made his New York City Opera debut, as Germont in “La Traviata.” Though acclaimed for his sumptuous singing in that performance, he also committed a memorable faux pas that began the occasional carping by critics about his acting abilities.

In a 2007 interview with Rudolph Rauch for Opera News, Mr. MacNeil recalled making hand gestures in the aria “Di Provenza” that didn’t agree with the music, and he acknowledged he had been unaware of the meaning of the words he was singing. “It seemed like the hand was out there for about half an hour, and it began to shake,” he said. “I finally got it back in, and I decided then I was not going to sing any more Italian operas until I really knew the language.”

His Italian improved, though his acting continued to draw sporadic barbs from critics. Commenting on his performance as the villain Scarpia, the villain in a 1985 performance of Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera, Donal Henahan of The Times wrote, “Cornell MacNeil, the Scarpia, sang mellifluously, but his wooden acting could fool nobody into believing him a sadistic tyrant.”
In 1959 Mr. MacNeil moved to Rome with his first wife, Margaret Gavan, and their five children. That March 5 he made his debut at La Scala in Milan as Carlo in Verdi’s “Ernani.” “His rich, flexible baritone soared and swelled with enormous power,” Time magazine wrote. He impressed La Scala’s manager, Antonio Ghiringhelli, enough that he offered him a contract.

But Mr. MacNeil signed instead with the Met after making his debut there on March 21, 1959 — barely two weeks after his La Scala debut — as the lead in Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” He would go on to sing that role at the Met more than 100 times.

Mr. MacNeil scored numerous successes in other roles as well. Commenting on his first Met appearance as Renato in Verdi’s “Ballo in Maschera” on March 7, 1962, Alan Rich wrote in The Times, “This superb American baritone may very possibly have had his finest hour.”

He sang Scarpia more than 90 times at the Metropolitan following his debut in the role on Nov. 2, 1959. His final performance at the Met was in that role, on Dec. 5, 1987. He retired from the opera a year later after medical tests showed he had a possible blockage of the carotid artery.

Mr. MacNeil occasionally sang in Wagnerian operas, including the roles of the Dutchman in “Der Fliegende Holländer” and the Herald in “Lohengrin.” But the consensus was that his talents were best on display in Italian operas.

His marriage to Ms. Gavan ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, the former Tania Rudensky, and five children from his first marriage: Walter, of New York; Mary Ellen MacNeil of Greenwood, Va.; Dennis, of Sag Harbor, N.Y.; Susan Keuter of Florence, Ore.; and Katherine Mary Dariani of Eau Gallie, Fla.; as well as two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

A few years before leaving the stage, Mr. MacNeil gave a straightforward assessment of the opera world to his friend and Met colleague Jerome Hines, the well-known bass, who interviewed him for a 1982 book “Great Singers on Great Singing.”

“Opera is an excessive art form populated by excessive people,” Mr. MacNeil said. “We make it more excessive than necessary. Singing is really a very simple thing.”

Giorgio Tozzi (January 8, 1923-May 30, 2011); Ketelsen sets up tribute page

Kyle Ketelsen & Giorgio Tozzi

Word has quickly spread in the opera world that the great bass-baritone and teacher Giorgio Tozzi has died. We don't have an obituary yet. However, Kyle Ketelsen, who was taught by Tozzi at Indiana University, has set up a tribute page on his website.

Ketelsen can next be seen from June 9-11 in Haydn's "Harmoniemesse" with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Click HERE for additional information. His next operatic performance is at the Liceu in Barcelona where he will reprise his sexy Escamillo in Bizet's "Carmen." Performances run from July 21-30.



Click HERE for an official obituary of Giorgio Tozzi.

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Cesare Siepi (1923-2010)

Italian opera giant Cesare Siepi dies aged 87

ROME (AFP) — Cesare Siepi, one of the best known opera basses of the 20th century, died on Monday at the age of 87, Italian media reported on Tuesday.

Siepi, born in Milan in 1923, was "a favourite of the crowd at (Milan opera house) La Scala," according to Italian daily Il Giornale.

He died on Monday in the US city of Atlanta after having lived in the United States for decades.

Specialising in the 19th century Italian repertoire and in Mozart's operas, Siepi made his debut at the Rigoletto in Schio in 1941 and soon after fled Mussolini's Italy to Switzerland.

He performed 379 times at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, playing 18 roles including Figaro and Don Giovanni in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," as well as Gurnemanz in Richard Wagner's "Parsifal," according to classical music label Naxos, which published many of his records.

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