Zachary Gordin back in San Francisco for song recital

Fresh from his return appearance at the Olympic Music Festival, the ever popular Zachary Gordin returns to San Francisco for a song recital with accompanist Bryan Nies. The two will perform as part of the Old First Concerts series in the City by the Bay on Friday, August 15th.

The duo will perform songs of Reynaldo Hahn’s Chansons Grises, as well as his À Chloris, Dans la nuit, Trois jours de vendage, Néère, and more.  They will then switch to British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ song cycle The House of Life.

Tickets are available online.

Baritone Brigade in Baltimore Gondoliers

 

Jeffrey Williams (left);  Jeffrey Williams, Andrew Pardini and Alexis Tantau (right)

Barihunk Jeffrey Williams, who we introduced to readers in December 2012, will be singing the role of Don Alhambra in the Young Victorian Theatre Company's production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers. He's joined in the cast by a number of luscious low voices, including Spencer Adamson as Antonio [see photo below], Andrew Adelsberger as Duke of Plaza Toro, Timothy Kjer as Giorgio and Andrew Pardini as Giuseppe Palmieri.

Performances are on Saturday, July 12, Sunday, July 13, Saturday, July 19 and Sunday, July 20 at the  Sinex Theater in Baltimore. Tickets and additional cast information are available online.

Spencer Adamson and the cast of Gondoliers

The Gondoliers, or, The King of Barataria, was the twelfth opera written together by Gilbert and Sullivan. Opening on December 7, 1889 at the Savoy Theatre, The Gondoliers ran for 554 performances, and was the last of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas that would achieve wide popularity.

The story of the opera concerns the young bride of the heir to the throne of Barataria who arrives in Venice to join her husband. It turns out, however, that he cannot be identified, since he was entrusted to the care of a drunken gondolier who mixed up the prince with his own son. To complicate matters, the King of Barataria has just been killed. The two young gondoliers must now jointly rule the kingdom until the nurse of the prince can be brought in to determine which of them is the rightful king. Moreover, when the young queen arrives to claim her husband, she finds that the two gondoliers have both recently married local girls. A last complicating factor is that she, herself, is in love with another man.

Reader Submission: Edward Laurenson from New Zealand

Edward Laurenson

25-year-old New Zealand native Edward Laurenson is our latest reader submission. He graduated from the University of Auckland in 2010 with a Bachelor of Commerce, and completed his Honours in 2011. The lyric baritone was influenced to become a singer listening to Freddie Mercury of Queen.

In 2012-13, he was selected to be an Emerging Artist with The Dame Malvina Major Foundation, and subsequently performed in the New Zealand Opera production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly. He has also been a regular performer with the Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus, where he performed major roles.

Before pursing a career in opera full-time, he performed in a number of musicals, including Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, he Tin Man in The Wiz, Tony in Bernstein's West Side Story and Danny in Grease.

Edward Laurenson talks about his career:

In 2012, he was awarded Vocal National Young Performer of the Year at Performing Arts Competitions Association of New Zealand, and the Lieder prize at the New Zealand Aria competition. He has also won the Guildhall School of Music & Drama Award, as well as the Australian Opera Awards Committee’s Sheila Prior Memorial Prize, Phoebe Patrick Award and the David Harper Award.

 Edward Laurenson sings "Hai già vinta la causa!" from Marriage of Figaro:

He is currently one of six finalists in the 2014 Lexus Song Quest competition, with winners being announced on July 26th. The Lexus Song Quest has launched the careers of some of New Zealand’s most celebrated opera stars including Dames Kiri Te Kanawa, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Amitai Pati, Malvina Major, Jonathan Lemalu, Madeleine Pierard and Phillip Rhodes.

Reader Submission: Model turned Barihunk Oleg Loza

Oleg Loza

Our latest Reader Submission is the Moscow bass-barihunk Oleg Loza. We hear numerous barihunks described as having "model looks," but Loza actually was a model at the Slava Zaitsev Model Agency. He modeled while completing his Master's Degree in Voice at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.

Loza reminds many of his fellow compatriot Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who shares his flowing long hair that gives them both a pop star vibe. Like Hvorostovsky, he is a serious classical singer, who originally studied voice and choral conducting before pursuing a career as a singer. In 2009, he won the prestigious Feodor Chaliapin Singing Competition in Yalta.

Oleg Loza sings Valentin's aria from Gounod's Faust:

After graduating from the Conservatory in 2012, he made his professional debut as Norton in Rossini's La cambiale di matrimonio at the Wiener Kammeroper in Austria. He followed that up with a run as Schaunard in Puccini's La boheme at both the Wiener Kammeroper and Amsterdam's Het Companientheater.

Since that time, he's been a young artist with the Zürich Opera, where he has performed Usciere in Verdi's Rigoletto and Deputato in Verdi's Don Carlo. He is currently singing Happy in Puccini's La fanciulla del West, which runs through July 13th and will run again September 24-October 10.

Our best material comes from our readers, so send your submissions to Barihunks@gmail.com

Barihunks Humm & Estabrooks featured online!

Äneas Humm

Five days ago, we posted about the 19-year-old Swiss wunderkind Äneas Humm. You can now watch the 21-minute documentary that appeared on Swiss television online. Although the segment is in German, non-German speakers will enjoy clips of him studying with the great soprano Kristina Laki, performing onstage and peaking behind the curtain at his personal life.

We have also just learned that Humm will be replacing a baritone in Bremen tomorrow and performing Wolfgang Rihm's Hölderlin-Gedichte.

Jonathan Estabrooks

Another barihunk will be online tomorrow, when calendar model Jonathan Estabrooks will be taking questions online and showcasing music from his new CD, THESE MILES. The program, "The Story Of Jonathan Estabrooks" will air on Tuesday, July 8th at YTP RADIO. You can purchase his debut album at Amazon.

Aaron Sørensen to sing Colline in reopened historic theatre

Aaron Sørensen from the Barihunks calendar & the Criterion Theatre in Maine

Aaron Sørensen, who was one of this year's recipients of a Barihunks calendar grant, made his West Coast recital debut in a concert with hunkentenor Jonathan Blalock with the grant. Having wowed audiences along the Pacific Ocean with his sonorous low notes, he now returns to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. He'll be at the Bar Harbor Music Festival performing Colline in a single night performance of Puccini's La boheme. 

The opera will be performed in the historic art-deco Criterion Theater in downtown Bar Harbor. Opened in 1932 as a movie palace, prominent families like the Rockefellers, who vacationed in the area, were frequent patrons. The theatre is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and recently reopened after a $150,000 upgrade 
to their marquee. 

Aaron Sørensen sings Mozart's "Alcandro, lo confesso" at his West Coast recital debut at Duende (Don't miss the low note at the end!):

Now in its 48th season, the Bar Harbor Music Festival has advanced the careers of over 1,800 aspiring instrumentalists, singers, and composers, presenting a summer of music encompassing recitals, chamber music, Pops, a new composers series, opera, jazz, and string orchestra concerts.

La boheme will be performed on Friday, July 11 at 8:00 p.m.. The cast also includes Jonathan Lasch as Marcello, Chad Sloan as Schaunard, Janinah Burnett as Mimi and Scott Scully as Rodolfo. Tickets are available online.

Interview with stars of Cincinnati Opera's "Silent Night"

Gabriel Preisser (Photo: Provided/Opera Philadelphia, Dominic Mercier)

As the Cincinnati Opera gears up to be the latest company to present Kevin Puts' Silent Night, the Cincinnati Enquirer sat down and interviewed three of the leading baritones from the production. Here is the interview with Craig Irvin, Gabriel Preisser and Andrew Wilkowske.

You were all in the world premiere at Minnesota Opera in 2011. Tell us about your characters.
Preisser: I play Lt. Gordon, the Scottish lieutenant who proposes the truce. I think he’s the kind of person who’s trying to do the right thing. He doesn’t go into it wanting to fraternize, but his troops are exhausted and he’s told they’ll be home for Christmas. The Scottish, I assume, have no idea why they’re fighting. It’s not their war. Yet there they are. So when he sees these German soldiers singing Christmas carols, and the bagpipe player jumps up on the trench, he has no choice but to say we need to have a truce.
Irvin: I’m Lt. Horstmayer, the German, who has to deal with Sprink (a private who is an opera singer), who’s questioning him all the time and going into no-man’s land, where Horstmayer feels he’ll be killed any moment.
Wilkowske: My character is Ponchel, the aide-de-camp of the French lieutenant. He’s the comic relief. … In an opera that’s about people getting killed all the time, it’s nice to be the guy who gets to have a couple of jokes. He carries an alarm clock to remind him that he used to have coffee every day at that time with his mother.
Irvin: In the Muppet opera version, we decided he’s Fozzie.
Preisser: In the “MASH” version, he’s Radar O’Reilly.

[Read the entire interview at the Cincinnati Enquirer]

Performances are on July 10 and 12 and tickets are available online.