Anders Froehlich reprises sexy Don Giovanni; Showing skin in "Bonjour M. Gauguin"

Anders Froehlich: Babe magnet as Don Giovanni

We love regional opera, where some of the most innovative and exciting new theater happens. It's also a testing ground for the next generation of talent. Anyone who has been following the regional opera scene in the San Francisco Bay Area has probably heard the buzz surrounding Anders Froehlich.

Readers of this site will remember the sexy rock climbing photo and video that we ran when we first introduced him on our site two years ago. We first spotted him as the Grandfather Clock in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges at Berkeley Opera and Fiorello in the Barber of Seville at Opera San Jose.

Anders Froehlich as Don Giovanni with Cinnabar Opera

The latest regional company to engage Froehlich is the upstart Virago Theater Company in Alameda just outside of Oakland, California and across the Bay from the West Coast's opera capital, San Francisco. They have cast Froehlich as the title character in Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Don Giovanni is being directed by the retired diva Olivia Stapp, who was one of the most thrilling singers of the last generaation. She is also the past artistic director of Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, another regional opera company in the area. Don Giovanni will be conducted by Jonathan Khuner, a well-known figure at the San Francisco Opera and West Edge Opera. There is one performance left on March 9th.

Froehlich's next big break will come next month when he returns to West Edge Opera to play the title role in the much anticipated performance of Fabrizio Carlone's opera Bonjour M. Gauguin. The opera has a parental warning because of "partial nudity," which we've been told involves Froehlich. You can get your tickets HERE and make sure to get your opera glasses before you go.

Daniel Cilli to perform Traviata in Napa; French music in New Orleans; Sing premiere with Opera Parallèle

Daniel Cilli in "City of Sin" at West Edge Opera

After seeing Daniel Cilli shirtless in West Edge Opera's "City of Sin," we realized that we've probably not featured him as regularly as we should. The singer emerged on the scene as a member of the Opera San Jose ensemble from 2006-2010, scoring critical acclaim in Eugene Onegin, Romeo and Juliet, Barber of Seville and the Marriage of Figaro. He's now been in two productions with the innovative West Edge Opera, which used to be known as Berkeley Opera.

Cilli has a new SoundCloud page where you can listen to some clips. He also has some interesting upcoming engagements, starting with the Baron in La Traviata with the Livermore Valley Opera. Performances run from March 9-17 in Livermore, with a performance at the historic Napa Valley Opera House on March 13. It's believed to be the premiere of La traviata at the Napa Valley Opera House. Click HERE for additional performance information or tickets.

Daniel Cilli as Mercutio at Opera San Jose

On May 9 and 10, he'll appear with the Louisiana Philharmonic in the Fauré Requiem as part of their French Master series. There are performances in New Orleans and Covington and tickets are available online.

On June 7th he premieres the role of Carlo Gesualdo in Dante De Silva’s Gesualdo, Prince of Madness​ with San Francisco's Opera Parallèle.

You can check out his artistry on his new SoundCloud site. 

Cleveland gushes over Edwin Crossley-Mercer

Edwin Crossley-Mercer

We've been gushing about Edwin Crossley-Mercer ever since a reader alerted us to his brilliant artistry a few years ago. We recently blogged about his long-overdue American recital debut yesterday at Baldwin Wallace University. Cleveland Plain Dealer Music Critic Donald Rosenberg, was just as impressed by the French singer and wrote this glowing review. Let's hope that other U.S. presenters add him to their calendars.
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by Dan Rosenberg, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

March must be the appointed month for vocal recitals by major artists in Northeast Ohio. From last Friday through this Sunday, the region will have welcomed tenor Alek Shrader (Oberlin College), baritone Thomas Hampson (E.J. Thomas Hall) and sopranos Christine Brewer (Cleveland Institute of Music) and Deborah Voigt (Oberlin).

And there's another. In what can only be deemed a coup, the Art Song Festival at Baldwin Wallace University presented the first American recital by French baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer on Sunday in Gamble Auditorium. We are likely to hear a great deal more of this superb artist in coming years.
Crossley-Mercer -- of Irish-French extraction -- shared the stage with Russian pianist Semjon Skigin, whose collaborations were at all times sonorous and connected to the expressive demands in the program's German, English and French songs.

The pianist interacted closely with Crossley-Mercer, whose baritone is an instrument of lustrous individuality and suppleness. He is capable of scaling the voice down to a focused whisper or projecting with stentorian force. Words are paramount to Crossley-Mercer, as are inflections that heighten the drama in each song.

Edwin Crossley-Mercer

The 30-year-old baritone, singing everything from memory, opened with works by Beethoven and Brahms. There were moments when his approach in this repertoire brought to mind the probing intellectuality and subtlety of the late German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with whom Crossey-Mercer studied in master classes.

But these performances were no acts of imitation. Crossley-Mercer brought distinctive touches to the six odes to love and nature in Beethoven's "An die ferne geliebte,"altering vocal colors and employing physical gestures to enhance the moods.

In six songs by Brahms, Crossley-Mercer applied warmth to placid lines, dreamy nuances where the texts portray a blissful world and ecstatic potency to passages of amorous flight. Skigin's shapely partnership was key to the success of these performances, as they were when the musicians turned to afternoon's other fare.

Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Semjon Skigin perform "Autumn Leaves" ("Les feuilles mortes") :

Crossley-Mercer sang four selections from Vaughan Williams' "Songs of Travel" in crisply enunciated English that made reading the printed texts unnecessary. Turning to chansons by Faure, Debussy and Poulenc, he attained even higher levels of immediacy and idiomatic authority, especially in Debussy's "Chevaux de bois," whose carousel narrative emerged with a palpable sense of wonder and charm.

Those qualities also marked Crossley-Mercer's encores -- a debonair version of "C'est si bon" that would give Yves Montand and Dean Martin a run for their respective currencies, and "Les feuilles mortes" ("Autumn Leaves") sung in the silkiest French.

Crossley-Mercer. Remember the name. And to thank the Art Song Festival for the introduction.

BREAKING NEWS: 6 of 10 Met Audition finalists are BARITONES!!!

Richard Ollarsaba

If there was any doubt remaining that we're in the "Golden Age of Baritones," it was put to rest today at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions semi-finals. An astonishing six of the ten singers advancing to next Sunday's finals are baritones or basses. Those singers include Matthew Anchel of the Eastern Region, Brandon Cedel of the Middle Atlantic Region, Musa Ngqungwana of the Middle Atlantic Region, Richard Ollarsaba of the Upper Midwest Region, Thomas Richards of the Central Region and Efraín Solís of the Western Region.

The ten winners will now perform on March 10 at 3 p.m at the Grand Finals Concert accompanied by the Met Orchestra. The singers will have a week of preparation with Met musical and dramatic coaches to prepare for the concert, which is open to the public.   Tickets for the Grand Finals Concert may be purchased at the Met Box Office, by phone at 212-362-6000, or online atwww.metopera.org.

Efraín Solís

Other singers advancing are tenor Michael Brandenburg of the Central Region, soprano Tracy Cox of the Western Region, soprano Sydney Mancasola of the New England Region and Rebecca Pedersen of the Rocky Mountain Region.  Barihunks would like to congratulate all of the finalists and wish them well (but we will unabashedly be pulling for the baritones!).

Celebrating the anniversary of Carmen's premiere

Nmon Ford as Escamillo in Szeged

Georges Bizet's popular opera Carmen debuted on March 3, 1875 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. The opera was only mildly successful and the composer died almost three months to the day after the premiere. It's another one of those operas that we love for having three barihunk roles, the major role of the torreador Escamillo, the Lieutenant of Dragoons Zuniga, and the Corporal of Dragoons Moralès.

Escamillo arrives in Act 2 with his famous aria "Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre" (a.k.a. the Torreador Song). Bizet was reportedly contemptuous of the music that he wrote for Escamillo, remarking of the Torreador Song, "Well, they asked for ordure, and they've got it." We've had many baritones remark to us that it's a fiendishly and deceptively difficult aria to sing.

In the original play by Prosper Mérimée, Escamillo is a peripheral character, a picador named Lucas who is only briefly Carmen's grand passion. At the premiere, Escamillo was sung by the Belgian-born baritone Jacques Bouhy, who had already made a name for himself singing Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust and as Mozart's Figaro.

Kyle Ketelsen as Escamillo

Escamillo is a perfect barihunk role, as he's often portrayed as dashing and debonair, decked out in a uniform or other sexy costume, making him a particularly striking and attractive character. Some of the sexiest singers in the world today have Escamillo in their repertory, including Michael Todd Simpson, Mariusz Kwiecien, Nmon Ford, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Ildar Abdrazakov, Kyle Ketelsen, Alexander Vinogradov and Fernando Radó.

Lee Poulis sings Escamillo

Baritones win two top awards at George London competition & three encouragement awards

Steven LaBrie and John Brancy

The 42nd annual George London Foundation Awards Competition was held Friday night and baritones took two of the top prized and three of the encouragement awards. Nicholas Pallesen and Jamez McCorkle both were awarded the top prize which comes with a $10,000 financial gift. Encouragement awards went to John Brancy, who received the Theodor Uppman memorial award; Steven LaBrie won the Herbert J. Frank memorial award; and, a final baritone winner was Jonathan Michie. Aubrey Allicock, who has been featured on this site along with Pallesen, Brancy and LaBrie, was awarded an Honorable Mention.

The competition took place in a front of a capacity audience at Gilder Lehrman Hall at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. A total of $82,000 was given in awards. After three days of preliminary auditions during which ninety singers were heard, 24 were selected as finalists. Of these, seven were selected as winners of George London Awards of $10,000 each and seven were given George London Foundation Encouragement Awards of $1,000 each. The remaining 10 finalists received $500 Honorable Mention awards.

Theodor Uppman as Billy Budd in 1951

Other winners of the $10,000 top prize included tenor Dominic Armstrong, tenor Noah Baetge, soprano Felicia Moore, soprano Jessica Muirhead, and  Additional $1,000 encouragement awards went to tenor Adam Bonanni, mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb, soprano Marina Costa - Jackson, and mezzo-soprano Shirin Eskandani.

This year’s panel of judges included soprano Harolyn Blackwell, mezzo-soprano Nedda Casei, opera stage director Bruce Donnell, former Metropolitan Opera administrator Alfred F. Hubay, George London Foundation President Nora London, former Metropolitan Opera leading tenor and current voice professor George Shirley, and performing arts consultant Thurmond Smithgall.

Since 1971, the annual competition of The George London Foundation for Singers has been giving its George London Awards, and a total of more than $2 million, to an outstanding roster of young American and Canadian opera singers who have gone on to international stardom – the list of past winners includes Christine Brewer, Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming, Catherine Malfitano, James Morris, Matthew Polenzani, Sondra Radvanovsky, Neil Shicoff, and Dawn Upshaw.

Met Competition Finalists Arrive in NY: Includes Seven Baritones

Brandon Cedel showing off his barihunk cred

Twenty singers, including seven baritones, who won regional competitions around the United States arrived in New York yesterday to begin rehearsals for the semi-finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. The Met Auditions, this year celebrating their 60^th anniversary, are a major stepping stone to a career as an opera singer and were crucial in introducing many of today's best-known stars, such as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, Samuel Ramey, Deborah Voigt, and Dolora Zajick.

We were thrilled that over a third of the semi-finalists are baritones, who we will be rooting for. They include: Matthew Anchel, bass (Eastern Region; New York, NY); Brandon Cedel, bass-baritone (Middle Atlantic Region; Edward Nelson, baritone (Mid-South Region; Los Angeles, CA); Musa Ngqungwana, bass-baritone (Middle Atlantic Region; Richard Ollarsaba, bass-baritone (Upper Midwest Region; Tempe, AZ); Thomas Richards, bass-baritone (Central Region; Burnsville, MN); and, Efrain Solis, baritone (Western Region; Santa Ana, CA).

The semi-finalists will rehearse with the company's music staff for two days in preparation for the Semi-Finals competition on Sunday, March 3. The winners of that event will go on to sing in the Grand Finals Concert accompanied by the Met Orchestra on March 10 at 3 p.m. The finalists will have a week of preparation with Met musical and dramatic coaches to prepare for the Concert, which is open to the public. 

Tickets for the Grand Finals Concert may be purchased at the Met Box Office, by phone at 212-362-6000, or online atwww.metopera.org. 

Other finalists include: Michael Brandenburg, tenor (Central Region; Austin, IN);  Hershey, PA); Tracy Cox, soprano (Western Region; Dallas, TX); William Davenport,  tenor (Middle Atlantic Region; Rockville, MD); Hye Jung Lee, soprano (Gulf Coast Region; Seoul, South Korea); Juan José de León, tenor (Great Lakes Region; Corpus Christi, TX); Christopher Lowrey, countertenor (New England Region; Johnston, RI); Sydney Mancasola, soprano (New England Region; Redding, CA); Felicia Moore, soprano (Eastern Region; Princeton, NJ);  Port Elizabeth, South Africa);  Rebecca Pedersen, soprano (Rocky Mountain Region; Bountiful, UT);  Jessica Strong, soprano (Northwest Region; Winnipeg, Manitoba); Karen Vuong, soprano (Eastern Region; Los Angeles, CA); Benjamin Werley, tenor (Midwest Region; Pittsburgh, PA); and,  Melinda Whittington, soprano (Southeast Region; Charlotte, NC).