Christopher Burchett in skivvies for Soldier Songs

Christopher Burchett rehearsing Soldier Songs

Christopher Burchett begins the 2013 season in New York City with the one-man opera Soldier Songs by David T. Little as part of the PROTOTYPE New Music Festival produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE. Burchett has been running 30 miles a week to get into shape for the role. Of course, he's taking over the role from barihunk favorite David Adam Moore, who wowed readers with his photos from Soldier Songs.

Performances begin this Friday and run through January 18th at the Pace Schimmel Center for the Arts in New York City. Tickets are available online.

David Adam Moore in Soldier Songs

Burchett will also take Soldier Songs to Rotterdam in the Netherlands as part of the Operadagen Festival in 2015.

Soldier Songs combines elements of theater, opera, rock-infused-concert music, and animation. The  opera explores the perceptions versus the realities of the Soldier, the exploration of loss and exploitation of innocence, and the difficulty of expressing the truth of war.

Christopher Burchett discusses his preparations to play the leading role in Soldier Songs.

from PROTOTYPE Festival on Vimeo.

NEWS FLASH: Andre Courville is runner up in Met Auditions

Andre Courville

Andre Courville, a 26-year-old bass-baritone, took second-place in today's Metropolitan Opera National Council’s Gulf Coast regional auditions. Courville is the Director of Music and organist at Our Lady of Fatima Roman Catholic Church in Lafayette, Louisiana and an aspiring opera singer.

He wowed judges by singing “Sorge infausta,” the magician Zoroastro’s aria from Handel’s “Orlando.” Then the church musician ironically turned himself into Mephistopheles with an aria from Gounod’s “Faust.”

The judges for the Gulf Coast regional finals were Gayletha Nichols, the executive director of the Metropolitan Opera National Council; Kim Witman, general director of the Wolf Trap Opera Company; Christopher McBeth, artistic director of the Utah Symphony and Opera; and Steven White, principal guest conductor of Opera Roanoke.

First place went to Korean soprano Hye Jung Le, who sang Amina’s aria from Bellini’s “La Sonnambula" and “I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung,” from John Adams' “Nixon in China.”

Andre Courville playing the organ in Lafayette

The budding star and former valedictorian of Cecilia High School has shown amazing musical talent since he was a kid, conducting his church choir in Henderson, Louisiana. 

Courville recently made his operatic debut in New York City as Hermann, Schlémil, and Crespel in The Tales of Hoffmann with the Martina Arroyo Foundation.  Other operatic roles include Bartolo in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Simone in Gianni Schicchi, and Marquis d’Obigny in La Traviata at Opera in the Ozarks.  He performed roles in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers and Delibe’s Lakmé with the Loyola Opera Theatre, and has performed with the New Orleans Opera Association.  In 2005, he had the honor of performing the bass solo in Dave Brubeck’s Pange Lingua Variations with members of the Buffalo Philharmonic and the composer at the piano.

Courville will be a member of the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program for Singers this year, where he'll be singing Marquis d’Obigny in Verdi's La Traviata.

Dan Kempson to Premiere Staged Version of Mohammed Fairouz’s Sumeida’s Song

Dan Kempson

Dan Kempson, who was the shirtless smash hit of our calendar this year and who made our Top 25 list of 2012, will perform in the staged World Premiere of Mohammed Fairouz’s opera Sumeida’s Song. The one-hour opera will run from January 9-15.

  

The opera will be the first Arab-American opera to be fully produced on an American stage and comes on the heals of the controversy over al-Jazeera buying Current Media.  

Based on the classic Tawfiq El-Hakim play, Song of Death, the opera follows the return of a young man, Alwan, from Cairo to his Upper Egyptian peasant village. He defies his family’s expectations to fulfill an age-old blood feud, instead revealing the true purpose of his return: to end the cycle of violence. For his attempts to bring light and modernity to his village, and for challenging the structure of his society, he pays the ultimate price.

Hear the mezzo aria "The Saddle Bag" and the baritone aria "I Shall Tell Them" from the concert version premiere at the New York Society for Ethical Culture:

Tawfiq El-Hakim's story is well known in the Arab World, and Fairouz’s operatic adaptation captures the underlying aspirations of young people, like Alwan, who stand up for their ideals and for aspirations of a better life. Alwan's resonant proclamation — "I won’t kill" — embodies the noble mission of justice and progress in this timeless, timely, and universal story.

This staged world-premiere production will feature a chamber orchestration with Arabic and western instruments.  The cast also features Rachel Calloway, Edwin Vega and Amelia Watkins. Tickets are available online.

Alex Esposito in London recital & Berlin "Don Giovanni"

Alex Esposito as Leporello in Berlin

We're unabashedly huge fans of Italian barihunk Alex Esposito, especially when singing Mozart. His calendar is full of Mozart again this year with his definitive Leporello in Don Giovanni up next at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Also in the cast is Seth Carico, one of our favorite American singers, who will be taking on Masetto. Performances are on January 17, 19, 24 and 30 and tickets are available online.

Other upcoming performances as Leporello include one at the Théâtre du capitole in Toulouse (with barihunks Christopher Maltman and Kostas Smoriginas alternating as Don Giovanni) opening on March 15. On May 3rd he'll reprise his Leporello at the Bayersche Staatsoper in Munich with Gerald Finley as Don Giovanni and Tareq Nazmi as Masetto. 

Seth Carico from our 2012 Barihunks calendar

Carico, who is now part of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper, can be seen this year as Biterolf in Wagner's Tannhäuser, the Sacristan in Puccini's Tosca, Count Ribbing in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, Panthée in Berlioz' Les Troyens, Count Ceprano in Verdi's Rigoletto, Astolfo in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia and Scriften in Dietsch's Das Geisterschiff.

Alex Esposito sings the catalogue aria from Don Giovanni:

Esposito will also be making his Rosenblatt Recitals debut at Wigmore Hall in London on February 5th. His program will include Leporello's catalogue aria, as well as "Vieni la mia vendetta" from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, "Vi ravviso, o luoghi ameni" from Bellini's La Sonnambula, "Cade dal ciglio il velo" from Rossini's Mosè in Egitto. He will also sing songs by Beethoven, Cesti, Carissimi and Tosti. Tickets are available on the Wigmore Hall website.

New York Post's Barihunk Spotting on New Year's Eve

Chris Herbert (photo by Geoff Silver)

In an item titled "Sweet celebration," the New York Post's Page Six gossip column features this about Martha Stewart and her barihunk nephew Chris Herbert. 

Martha Stewart certainly didn’t spend much time in the kitchen on New Year’s Eve. The domestic doyenne rang in the New Year with her nephew Chris Herbert, part of the acclaimed male singing quartet the New York Polyphony, Herbert’s partner Tim Long, and Stewart’s longtime friend Memrie Lewis. The group popped into Le Cirque in Midtown just before midnight for champagne and a crème brulée. Director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi, were also spotted at the restaurant. 

Herbert's aforementioned group New York Polyphony will next appear on January 26 with the Miller Theatre's Early Music Series at New York City's Church of Saint Mary the Virgin. They then head off on tour to Massachusetts, North Carolina, California, Alberta, Virginia, Louisiana and Texas. Check out their full schedule at their website. 

Chris Herbert and his Aunt Martha (taken from her wonderful blog)

Also, check out their amazing new album endBeginning, which was was recorded in the superb acoustics of the 14th century church of Länna, Sweden, and features rare and never-before recorded works from the Franco-Flemish Renaissance by composers Crecquillon, Brumel and Clemens non Papa.

 New York Polyphony performs William Byrd's "Agnus Dei" on WQXR in New York:

  

Reader Submission: Pavol Kubán

Pavol Kubán

Last year we got some amazing reader submissions and it remains the #1 way that new talent finds its way onto Barihunks. It only took one day into the new year for us to receive our first reader submission of 2013.

A fan in Germany spotted Slovakian barihunk Pavol Kubán making his debut at the Semperoper in Dresden playing Nibbio in Domenico Sarro’s 1724 two-part intermezzo "Dorina e Nibbio." The original story by Pietro Metastasio tells of the impresario Nibbio who wishes to make the vocally talented village girl Dorina the star of his latest production. During the rehearsals Dorina increasingly feels herself exploited and humiliated. The end result is a public scandal at the premiere.

Pavol Kubán (Nibbio) and Gala El Hadidi (Dorina)

Pavol Kubán won the 2009 second Price at the Ferruccio Tagliavini Singing Competition in Austria and the Special Prize of the Opera Studio at the Scuola Italiana dell'Opera in Bologna. In the same year he appeared as a soloist with the baritone Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Oratorium in Slovakia, Austria, Hungary and was on two U.S. tours. In 2010, he was a finalist at the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition in Vienna.  

Since 2010 Pavol Kuban studied at the Scuola Italiana dell'Opera in Bologna. In 2011, he joined the Opera Festival Itria in Martina Franca, Italy in two productions, "Il novello di Giasone" and "IIl convitato di pietra."

Additional performances of "Dorina e Nibbio" are on March 24, May 9, May 19 and June 30. Tickets are available online.  

Tango with Erwin Schrott at 54 Below

Erwin Schrott

If you're going to be in New York on Sunday, February 3rd, you might want to head over to 54 Below where will be performing an intimate night of tango. Readers will recall that his photo with fellow barihunks Dmitri Hvorstovsky and Ildar Abdrazakov at tenor Charles Castronovo's event at 54 Below made our Top 25 of 2012 list under "Barihunk Feast." If you missed him that night, here's your chance to get up close and personal.

Schrott will fore-go the cavernous Metropolitan Opera for one night only and share his artistry in the 150-seat nightclub. The show will be centered around his award-winning CD Rojotango, which recently won the Echo Award, the European equivalent of the Grammy.

Barihunk Feast: Schrott, Hvorostovsky, Castronovo and Abdrazakov (Photo Credit: Charles Martin)

After winning Placido Domingo's international voice competition Operalia in 1998, Erwin Schrott has been an operatic superstar, burning up the stages of all the important opera houses of the world in Milan, London, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris with his acclaimed portrayals of all the great Mozart roles such as Don Giovanni, Leporello, and Figaro.

He's also become one of the most popular singers on this site.

Cover charges range from $30 to $40 and doors open at 8:45 PM for the 9:30 PM performance. Tickets are available online.