Tenor Jean-Michel Richer & barihunk Étienne Dupuis (right in both photos)
In March, we briefly mentioned the world premiere of Australian composer Kevin
March and Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard's opera Les Feluettes (Lilies) at Opéra de Montréal. The production opens tomorrow and runs through May 28. It features barihunk Étienne Dupuis as the main character Simon Doucet and hunkentenor Jean-Michel Richer as the Count Vallier de Tilly, who is in love with Simon. Barihunk Tomislav Lavoie plays the crucial role of Father Saint-Michel.
Tenor Jean-Michel Richer and barihunk Étienne Dupuis (right)
The opera is based on the play, which tells the story of the confession of an aging prisoner to a bishop. Through the confession we
learn that the bishop and the prisoner were part of a gay love triangle and that the bishop was responsible for the death of a young man many years ago. The play was was made into a film called Lilies, which was directed by John Greyson. All of the roles in the opera, including the female roles of La Comtesse Marie-Laure de Tilly and Mademoiselle Lydie-Anne de Rozier, are sung by men as the story is told by actors in an all-male prison.
The term Feluette is Quebec expression with its root in the word fluet, (thin, frail in appearance) which, in common parlance of the time, referred to men who were weak, frail, or effeminate.
The opera will be performed at Pacific Opera Victoria from April 20-30 with Jean-Michel Richer reprising his role. Tickets for the Montréal performances are available online.
Opera San José is adding four new singers to its roster for the 2016-17 season, including barihunks Brian James Meyer and Colin Ramsey. Ramsey is familiar to our readers, having appeared numerous times, but Meyer is making his debut. The company is a resident company that keeps singers on its roster for the season like many European houses.
However, Brian James Myer is not new to Opera San José, having performed Masetto in Don Giovanni during the 2013-14 season, Angelotti in Tosca in
2015-16 season, Alessandro/Enrico in the world
premiere of Where Angels Fear to Tread and the Second Priest in The Magic
Flute.
Meyer made his debut with the Florida Grand Opera this season. He has also performed Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Silvio in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci with Sarasota Opera, Masetto in Mozart’s Don Giovanni Opera Las Vegas, Yakuside in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Albert in Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe with Chautauqua Opera. This season at Florida Grand Opera, he will be seen as Figaro in performances of
Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.
Brian James Myer
He holds a bachelors’ degrees in music education and romance languages from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a master’s degree in vocal performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is also a composer who has published a choral octavo that was performed by Santa Barbara Music.
Bass-barihunk Colin Ramsey will be performing Raimondo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Basilio in Rossini's Barber of Seville with Opera San José. On May 22, he'll be performing the National Anthem at the USA Water Polo Olympic Trials at the University of Southern California.
Colin Ramsey sings the Catalog Aria from Don Giovanni:
He has performed Mr. Kofner in Menotti's The Consul at both the Seattle Opera and Opera Santa Barbara. He made his debut with the Austin Lyric Opera as Il Frate
in Verdi's Don Carlo, as well as his debut with Green Mountain Opera
Festival as Alidoro in Rossini's La Cenerentola. He has also performed
with Austin Lyric Opera, Sarasota Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Pacific Music Works, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
and Wolf Trap Opera.
Ramsey is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music where he sang Giorgio in the US Premiere of Paisiello’s Nina, Bartolo in Le nozze di Figaro, and Sparafucile in Rigoletto. He recently took 3rd Prize in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in the Rocky Mountain Region.
Janis Apeinis will appear in the world premiere of Ēriks Ēšenvalds’ new opera “The Immured” at the Latvian National Opera on May 19th. There will be two additional performances and tickets are available online.
The Immured is an opera about the construction of a library, and the sacrifices without which nothing great can ever be created. It’s a modern-day legend, whose sources are found in the folklore of various European cultures, as well as in modern Latvian society. The heroes of this tale are artists and masons, librarians and politicians, their love and betrayal, faith and responsibilities.
The opera is based on an idea and original libretto written by Inese Zandere as a poem; Zandere wrote it in honor of and as an ode to poet Knuts Skujenieks, who has also rendered numerous European folktales into Latvian. This libretto won second place in the Latvian National Opera Libretto Contest.
Apeinis can next be seen as the Count di Luna in Verdi's Il trovatore, which opens on June 5th.
Two barihunks took 2nd and 3rd Prize at the Loren L. Zachary Vocal Competition for Young Opera Singers in Los Angeles today. Soprano Vanessa Vasquez took top honors, followed by John Viscardi and Jarrett Ott. Last year, barihunk Andre Courville took 1st Prize and was awarded $12,500.
Other past winners include tenor Brian Jagde, soprano Sydney Mancasola, bass Scott Conner, soprano Joyce El-Khoury, tenor Brian Hymel, soprano Nadine Sierra and countertenor Brian Asawa, who recently passed away.
Jarrett Ott will be singing Masetto at the Santa Fe Opera from July2-22. The cast includes fellow barihunks Daniel Okulitch as Don Giovanni and Kyle Ketelsen as Leporello.
John Viscardi can next be heard in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana with Opera Philadelphia on June 11th.
Attila Dobak in The Merry Widow (left) at Boston Lyric Opera
Jesse Blumberg and David McFerrin, two barihunks who we've frequently featured on this site, just performed in Lehar's The Merry Widow with the Boston Lyric Opera. Not featured in the credits was another barihunk, Attila Dobak, who was in a minor role, but has major barihunk chops.
Dobak was born in Budapest, Hungary and studied clarinet when he was seven and piano when he was twelve. He was inspired to study voice after watching the 3 Tenors Concert with Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo. He started studying voice at age sixteen and eventually was accepted into the Béla Bartok Conservatory of Music in Budapest, where he majored in Classic Voice and Opera. He also has a Masters Degree in Marketing & Communications from Corvinus University in Budapest.
He went on to study at the Longy School of Music at Bard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Longy and Opera North (where he was a young artist), he performed Bartolo and Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Raimondo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and Gideon March in Mark Adamo's Little Women.
In 2014, Dobak was invited to perform at the Miami Summer Music Festival
by Michael Rossi, the conductor of the Washington National Opera, where
he sang Figaro in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. He also appeared on NBC giving a solo opera performance with the Miami Summer Music Festival Orchestra.
He is currently based in Boston, where he is a member of the Boston Lyric Opera. In addition to The Merry Widow, he appeared in their production of Puccini's La boheme.
His goal in life is to become an opera/crossover singer and you can find examples of him singing opera on his YouTube page, as well as covers of Bruno Mars, Josh Groban and Broadway musicals.
Barihunks took two of the top prizes at the Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition and five total prizes, as Andrzej Filonczyk won First Prize for male singers and Leon Kosavic won Third Prize. Andrzej Filonczyk also won the prize for Most Promising Polish Singer and another prize affording him the opportunity to perform with the orchestra. Leon Kosavic also won the Best Polish Performance by non-Polish singer
Second Prize for men went to countertenor Jakub Orlinski and First Prize for women went to Salome Jicia.
Leon Kosavic in Round 2 of the Moniuszko Competition
Almost 40% of the finalists in the 2016 Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition will be basses and baritones. Advancing to Saturday's final round will be Polish bass Krzysztof Bączyk, Polish baritone Andrzej Filończyk, Ukrainian baritone Dmytro Kalmuchyn, Croatian baritone Leon Kosavic (who has been featured on this site), Ukrainian baritone Oleksandr Kyreiev and Moldavian baritone Adrian Timpau.
In the final round Filończyk will perform the Death of Posa from Verdi's Don Carlo and Moniuszko's "Czemuż mnie w chwilach" from Halka, Bączyk will sing "Damit dich niemand war" from Weber's Der Freischütz and "Gdzie wielkość Polski?" from Szeligowski's Bunt żaków, Kalmuchyn will perform "Ah, per sempre" from Bellini's I puritani and "Czemuż mnie w chwilach" from Moniuszko's Halka, Kosavic will sing "Per me giunto" from Verdi's Don Carlo and "Nakaż niech ożywcze słonko" from Moniuszko's Verbum nobile, Kyreiev is also singing Moniuszko's "Czemuż mnie w chwilach" from Halka and Thomas' "O vin, dissipe la tristesse" from Hamlet, and Timpau is singing Racmaninov's "Ves tabor spit" from Aleko and Kúrpinski's "Śpiewka Nikity Dobrzem zrobił" from Zamek na Czorsztynie.
Krzysztof Bączyk and Andrzej Filończyk sing the I puritani duet:
Leon Kosavic sings Ah! Per sempre:
You can watch the finals HERE on Saturday, May 14 starting at 6 PM CEST (9 AM PST/NOON EST)
Other finalists include Polish mezzo Kinga Borowska, Georgian soprano Salome Jicia, Korean tenor Keon Woo Kim, Russian mezzo Iuliia Mennibaeva, Polish soprano Sylwia Olszyńska, Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orlińska, American soprano Jacqueline Piccolino, British tenor Adam Smith, Polish soprano Ewa Tracz and Polish soprano Joanna Zawartko.
