Malachy Frame wins Northern Ireland Opera Voice Competition

Malachy Frame with is Festival of Voice award

Belfast-born barihunk Malachy Frame has won the Northern Ireland Opera’s Festival of Voice competition.

Frame is completing a Masters at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He previously studied at the University of Cambridge, where he read Music at Gonville and Caius College and held the Caius Fund 2011 Choral Scholarship.

Recent solo engagements have included Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, Vaughan-Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Five Mystical Songs, Duruflé and Fauré’s Requiem masses, Orff’s Carmina burana, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and the role of Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Frame recently performed in the world premiere of Gareth Wood’s Rivers of Light, a song cycle for baritone and four harps and the UK premiere of Mischa Tangian’s I carry your heart with me.

Barihunk trio in Royal Academy of Music's Marriage of Figaro

Bozidar Smiljanic and Richard Walshe

The Royal Academy of Music will present Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro under the baton of noted conductor Jane Glover on October 31 and November 1 and 2. Barihunks Bozidar Smiljanic and Richard Walshe will rotate the role of Figaro, while Henry Neill takes on the Count. Tickets and additional cast information is available online.

UPDATED POST: We have just learned that the Count is also double-cast with Haobin Wang performing on Saturday and Monday and Henry Neill on Friday and Sunday.

We introduced London born bass-barihunk Smiljanić back in March. He is currently studying opera at the Royal Academy of Music after gaining his degree in Law at the University of Nottingham.  In 2014, he made his debut at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera as A Captain in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. At the Academy, Smiljanić has worked on a variety of operatic roles including Leporello and Masetto in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Figaro in La nozze di Figaro, Monterone in Verdi's Rigoletto, Bartolo in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Le Roi  in Massenet's Cendrillon and Superintendent Budd in Britten's Albert Herring.

Walshe was educated at the King’s School in Gloucester and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2014 with first class honours. He is currently studying on a post-graduate Master of Arts degree at the Royal Academy.  During his time at the Royal academy, Walshe has performed Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Finzi’s Let us Garlands bring and Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel, as well as Antonio in Le Nozze di Figaro and Amantio di Nicolai in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.  He recently performed Bach’s Cantata BWV 203 at the Royal Academy of Music, Mozart’s Mass in C at Chichester Cathedral, Bach’s St.Johns Passion with the Waverley Singers and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with St Neots Choral Society.

Henry Neill

Neill currently studies on the Royal Academy of Music Opera and previously held a choral scholarship at St John’s College, Cambridge.  He was recently awarded the Sir Thomas Armstrong Prize for English Song at the Royal Academy of Music, the Audience prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards, the Sacred Aria Prize at the Mozart Singing Competition and is generously supported by the Carr-Gregory Scholarship. With Royal Academy Opera he has performed as Marco in Gianni Schicchi and most recently the role of Smirnov in Walton’s The Bear. Last year he played the role of Friquet in Garsington Opera’s production of Offenbach’s Vert Vert.

Introducing British bass-barihunk Tristan Hambleton

Tristan Hambleton

Tristan Hambleton, who will be competing in the semi-finals of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards competition on April 22nd, is new to this site. The British bass-barihunk is currently a member of the Opera School at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he was awarded the Tom Hammond Opera Prize.  He is an alumnus of St John’s College Cambridgea and Heidelberg Universität, where he pursued his studies in German.

Tristan Hambleton as a bass-baritone and a treble

Hambleton enjoyed considerable success as a treble soloist performing with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Les Arts Florissant in France and at the BBC Proms, at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and with various orchestras in many of the major London venues.

In recent years he has established a career as a recitalist and concert singer appearing with orchestras such as The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Hallé, Devon Baroque, Camerata Viva Tübingen and The London Mozart Players.

On the opera stage he has appeared as Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro for Hampstead Garden Opera, Re di Scozia in Handel’s Ariodante for Royal Academy Opera, Cadmus in Handel's Semele for Jackdaw’s, Bottom in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Edinburgh Fringe for the award-winning Shadwell Opera.

Tristan Hambleton

In Wagner’s bicentenary year. Hambleton was asked by Sir Mark Elder to sing the role of Herman Ortel in the Halle's concert performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Bridgewater Hall and has since been invited back to sing the bass solos in the Mozart Requiem with the orchestra.

On May 10th, he'll be performing Mozart's Mass in C minor, K427 with the Mayfield Festival Choir. This summer, Tristan will be joining the chorus at the Glyndebourne Opera for their festival season.

You can listen to him sing Tchaikovsky's None But the Lonely Heart HERE

Reader Submission: Ed Ballard

Ed Ballard

Ed Ballard, our latest reader submission, is currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The London born singer is a former chorister who went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music and later received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Philosphy in History from Clare College, Cambridge.

He has performed numerous choral works throughout the U.K. including Bach's St Matthew Passion, Handel's Messiah, Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, Fauré's Reqiuem, Duruflé's Reqiuem and Howells Reqiuem, Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass and Theresiennemesse, Finzi's In Terra Pax and Stainer's Crucifixion.

His operatic roles include Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Edinburgh and Guglielmo in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte in Cambridge, Death in Holst’s Savitri and Louis in The Wandering Scholar at the Grimeborn Opera Festival, Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Dartington International Summer School and Mother/Brother in Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins in Cambridge  with the Carmen Elektra Underground Opera.

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com