Audio of Zachary Gordin's Recent Dichterliebe

Zachary Gordin

Back in June we posted about Zachary Gordin performing Schubert's Dichterliebe at the Olympic Music Festival. There is now audio of that performance available online. Click HERE to listen to it.

Gordin will be performing the father in Sunny Knable and Jim Knable's children's opera The Magic Fish at the beautiful Mondavi Center in Sacramento on December 8th. Tickets are available online. The opera is based on the fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife" by the Brothers Grimm.

We're also pleased to announce that the California-based singer will be appearing again in the Barihunks calendar. We promise that you won't be disappointed when you see the photo!

Paulo Szot at intimate 54 Below this week

Paulo Szot

Fans of Paulo Szot can catch him in an intimate setting this week,  as he continues his cabaret show of music theater standards at 54 Below. The star of South Pacific an of opera stages worldwide is joined by his musical director and pianist Matthew Aucoin, along with David Fink on double bass and David Ratajczak on drums.

Szot has put together a night of mostly Broadway favorites, including Gershwin's "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess, "Were Thine That Special Face" from Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, "Old Devil Moon" from Finian's Rainbow, "What Kind of Fool Am I?" from Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, Bart Howard's "Fly Me to the Moon," and a medley that includes "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof, "Money" from Cabaret, and the opening number from The Lion King. 

Performances are running through August 11 and tickets are available online or by calling (866) 468-7619.

Also, keep your eye out for his upcoming CD on GPRrecords called Brazil To Broadway where he will sing Brazilian Standards in English and Broadway Standards in Portuguese.

Gianluca Margheri performs Handel's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo

Gianluca Margheri

Gianluca Margheri, who will be featured in our 2014 Barihunks calendar, can be seen on August 24th in Handel's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. The dramatic cantata, with an Italian libretto by Nicola Giuvo, has a plot almost identical to Handel's later English-language pastoral opera Acis and Galatea.

The performances will be with La Rocca Barocca in the coastal town of Giulianova in Italy. 

Andrew Garland: Wings for charity; Feathers for art

 

Andrew Garland shows of his wings and his "guns"

Barihunk and cycling enthusiast Andrew Garland is riding in the 2-day, 192 mile Pan -Mass challenge and proudly wearing his Valkyrie wings to show off his operatic pedigree. The ride raises money for life-saving cancer research and treatment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund and crosses the Commonwelath of Massachusetts. Each cyclist commits to raising between $500 and $5,000. Readers of this site can help Andrew Garland reach his goal by clicking HERE.  

The ride should help up build up plenty of lung power for his upcoming performance in Boston when he trades in his Valkyrie wings for some bird feathers. On Wednesday, August 7th, he'll be performing some of Papageno's music in "A Little Magic Flute & Birthday Celebration for Verdi, Wagner and Britten," a free preview of the Boston Lyric Opera's upcoming season at the Hatch Shell. The concert begins at 7 PM and no tickets are required. He'll be performing Papageno in its entirety with the Boston Lyric Opera from October 4-13. Tickets are available online.

Evan Boyer featured in free outdoor concert in Chicago

Evan Boyer

Evan Boyer will be part of an all-star operatic cast at a free outdoor concert at Chicago's Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park on Saturday, September 7, at 7:30 p.m. The concert is being presented by the Lyric Opera of Chicago. If you can't be there, the concert will be broadcast live on carried live on 98.7WFMT and wfmt.com, which is available online.  

Boyer will be joined by conductor Ward Stare, soprano Ana María Martínez, soprano Albina Shagimuratova, hunkentenor James Valenti, as well as members of the Ryan Opera Center.

Music will include selections from Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner’s Lohengrin, Verdi’s Otello, Verdi’s Il trovatore and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

Canadian Barihunks featured on CBC's "30 under 30"

The CBC recently ran a feature called "30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30." They surveyed Canada's conservatories, music competitions and professional training programs to come up with their list. Although we at Barihunks take the word "HOT" to mean sexy, it appears that they are going for a double meaning, with "HOT" also meaning "musicians with talent to keep an eye on," since they range in age from 8 to 28.

Both male singers featured are baritones who have appeared on our site and Philippe Sly even gets mentioned for regularly appearing on our site. We've heard other singers joke that Gordon Bintner is incapable of taking a bad picture and we couldn't agree more. Both Bintner and Sly are not only easy on the eyes, but they are indeed two of the most gifted musicians coming out of Canada.

As an aside, the featured soprano Wallis Giunta, is the girlfriend of barihunk John Brancy, who we've featured extensively of late. Small world!
 

Gordon Bintner (photo: Emily Ding)

Gordon Bintner (baritone)

Age: 25
From: Regina, Sask.
Hot because: The last 12 months have been huge for Bintner: he won first prize and the People's Choice Award at the 2012 Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio Competition, and in May he made his debut with L'Opéra de Montréal singing Lescaut in Massenet's Manon. We think he looks too sweet to portray womanizing Don Giovanni, but Bintner says it's his dream role.

Upcoming:
- February 2014, Toronto, Ont.: the role of Don Alfonso in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte with the COC's Ensemble Studio.

Philippe Sly (photo: Adam Scotti)

Philippe Sly (bass-baritone)

Age: 24
From: Ottawa, Ont.
Hot because: Sly has a way of impressing audiences and judges. He’s won both the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (which come with a cool $15,000 prize) and the Montreal International Musical Competition (add another $55,000 in winnings). Oh, he also makes frequent appearances on the popular Barihunks blog.

Upcoming:
- Sept. 12,15,16, Montreal, Que.: Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust with l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
- Dec. 6,7, Winnipeg, Man.: Handel’s Messiah with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
- March 15, Philadelphia, Penn.: Fauré’s Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

You can see the entire list at the CBC website. 

Introducing Theo Hoffman

Theo Hoffman (Photo by Liv Hoffman)

We originally noticed native New Yorker Theo Hoffman when someone pointed him out as a member of the 2013 Gerdine Young Artists at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Next season, the young singer will be returning to the riverfront city to cover Papageno in Die Zauberflöte and performing in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites.

He is currently working on in his undergraduate studies at Juilliard with the great baritone Sanford Sylvan. He will be performing Count Almaviva in Mozart's Le nozze do Figaro at Julliard in November and then perform a recital in Spring 2014. We will provide readers additional information closer to the performance dates.

"Tu se' morta" from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and Charles Ives' "Tom Sails Away"

Last season,  Hoffman made his Juilliard Opera debut as Lunardo in Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's Le donne curiose. This summer, he covered Major General Stanley in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance and Tomeš  in Smetana's The Kiss for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

In 2013, as a  SongFest Stern Fellow, he performed John Musto’s The Brief Light at The Colburn School in Los Angeles, where he also performed Ravel’s famous Don Quichotte a Dulcinée with famed accompanist Martin Katz.. He appeared in recital as part of Juilliard’s Songbook series, Schubert & Co, as well as at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in Lincoln Center, the Chautauqua Institution, the Eastman School of Music, and Juilliard Pre-College.