Barihunk Steven LaBrie will make his Tulsa Opera debut as the title character in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” which opens the company’s 2018-2019 season on October 19th.
LaBrie is familiar with the opera, having first sung Fiorello at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia and then making his professional debut as Figaro with the Lyric Opera Baltimore in 2015. He has also performed the role with Opera Hong Kong.
Steven LaBrie sings "A tanto amor" from Donizetti's La favorita:
He'll be joined in the cast by hunkentenor Aaron Blake as Almaviva, Sarah Coburn as Rosina and Peter Strummer as Dr. Bartolo.
Upcoming performances for LaBrie include Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore with Opera Omaha on February 15 and 17 and Jake Heggie's Three Decembers with the San Diego Opera on March 8, 9 and 10 with Frederica von Stade.
The Oratorio Society of New York will celebrate Polish Independence with a November 11th concert featuring barihunk Jesse Blumberg, soprano Susanna Phillips and Polish mezzo-soprano Ewa Płonka. The concert will feature Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater and Górecki’s Euntes Ibant et Flebant.
November 11th commemorates the anniversary of the restoration of Poland's sovereignty as the Second Polish Republic in 1918 from the German, Austrian and Russian Empires. Following the partitions in the late 18th century, Poland ceased to exist for 123 years until the end of World War I, when the destruction of the neighbouring powers allowed the country to reemerge.
The concert is part of “100 for 100,” a worldwide musical commemoration of the Polish centenary in conjunction with the Polish Cultural Institute New York, and Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne Edition (a music publishing house).
Górecki’s Euntes Ibant et Flebant:
Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater was written during his late Nationalist period and is characterized by his use of Polish melodies and rhythms. Circumstances in the composer's personal life inspired the work. Upon the death of his niece, Alusia Bartoszewiczówna, in January 1925, the composer spent time consoling his sister in her loss, subsequently choosing to set the Stabat Mater text, with its profound reflection on the grieving mother.
Górecki’s Euntes Ibant et Flebant has text from the Book of Psalms and is written for unaccompanied choir. The composition is extremely interesting from the harmonic point of view, as it constitutes a sublimated synthesis of the major-minor system with the folk music modality. This procedure provides the work with an ''extraterrestrial'', meditative character, emphasized in addition by the strict psalmody appearing more or less in the middle of the piece.
The concert also includes Vaughan Williams’s Dona nobis pacem, which looks back at recent wars and makes a plea for peace even as a new war threatens.
The concert will be held at Carnegie Hall at 8 p.m. and tickets are available online.
Mathias Hausmann (center)Photo: Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz
The Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz is presenting Gottfried von Einem's Dantons Tod with barihunk Mathias Hausmann as Georges Danton along with an array of hunky, shirtless men. The production is directed by Günter Krämer. The opera is being performed in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth.
Dantons TodPhoto: Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz
Georg Büchner's pitiless drama offered the Austrian composer Gottfried von Einem an ideal opportunity to examine Fascist structures of domination. Premiered at the Salzburg Festival two years after the Second World War, the work has lost nothing of its topicality today.
Dantons TodPhoto: Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz
In the opera, the French Revolution has disposed of the absolutist rulers, but the people continue to live in fear and trepidation. While the erstwhile revolutionary Georges Danton seeks pleasure in gambling and love, Robespierre intends to bring about the equality of all people with violence and terror. It is only when he himself comes to the attention of the tyrannical regime that Danton is persuaded to become politically active again. But doubts about his own motives and the possibility of achieving liberty and fraternity through violence stand in the way of his power to act. Additional performances are on October 13, 15, 19 and November 1, 4, and 15. Tickets and additional cast information is available online.
Brandon Cedel will sing the bass role of Giovanni in Oper Frankfurt's concert performances of Verdi's Il corsaro. He'll be joined by an all-star cast that includes Dorothea Röschmann as Medora, Željko Lučić as Seid and Mario Chang as Corrado.
The performance is part of the company's series of early and middle period operas by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto is based on Lord Byron's 1814 poem The Corsair, which many believe was based on the life of the 19th century French pirate Jean Lafitte. The composer expressed interest in Byron's poem The Corsair as early as 1844 when he was planning an opera for Venice, but a suitable baritone was not available. Therefore, he completed I masnadieri for London before completing Il corsaro, which premiered in Trieste on October 25, 1848. With the exception of two other productions, the opera all but vanished from the repertory after just three performances in Trieste. It didn't appear in the U.K. until 1966 and in the U.S. until 1981. The San Diego Opera produced it in 1982 with a cast that included June Anderson, Rosalind Plowright, Alfonso Navarrete and J. Patrick Raftery.
Thomas Hampson sings "Alfin questo corsaro...Cento leggiadre vergini" from Il corsaro:
The opera is about a noble pirate who battles the Muslims, is loved by a harem maid but in turn loves another, and who finally kills himself after his true love poisons herself when she thinks he is dead.
Performances are on November 7th and 9th and tickets and additional information is available online. Cedel is currently performing Angelotti in Puccini Tosca and the Messenger in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex with Oper Frankfurt.
Barihunk David Adam Moore will reprise the role of the Soldier in David T. Little's "Soldier Songs," which he created at the 2008 premiere at Le Poisson Rouge in New York. The Ford Theatres and LA Opera Off Grand, in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects, will present the West Coast premiere of the piece on October 13th.
The monodrama for baritone and chamber orchestra is a groundbreaking multimedia piece that combines elements of theatre, opera, rock-infused concert music and film. The piece contrasts the perceptions and realities of war from the soldier's perspective.
David Adam Moore
The score for Soldier Songs was commissioned by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, which premiered a concert version of the work in 2006. Soldier Songs received a fully staged workshop production sold to standing room capacity by Beth Morrison Projects in New York in 2008 at Le Poisson Rouge. Beth Morrison Projects produced the premiere of the full production at The International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut in June 2011 and was remounted during the inaugural PROTOTYPE Festival.
Tickets are priced at $35, 55 and 75. Tickets and information about parking are available by visiting FordTheatres.org or by calling (323) 461-3673.
Thomas Hampson and David Leigh(costume sketch courtesy of Canadian Opera)
Rufus Wainwright's second opera, "Hadrian," will open on October 13th at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. The opera is about a gay relationship in ancient Rome between the Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous. Daniel MacIvor's libretto was inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar's novel "Memoirs of Hadrian," which Wainwright read twenty years ago.
"Antinous and Hadrian," an opera based on the same story, was recently completed by composer Clint Borzoni and librettist Edward Ficklin, and was presented in New York in 2017 in concert form. You can hear the beautiful love scene HERE.
This is pop singer Rufus Wainwright's second attempt at opera, after "Prima Donna," which premiered at the New York City Opera in 2009, featuring barihunk Randal Turner.
Wainwright's "Hadrian" comes with an adult warning and features a musical interlude where Hadrian and Antinous make love. The cast includes the ageless barihunk Thomas Hampson as Hadrian, tenor Isaiah Bell as his lover Antinous, Karita Mattila as Plotina, bass-barihunk David Leigh as Turbo, Ambur Braid as Sabina and Ben Heppner as Dinarchus. The piece is sung in English and Latin.
The story is about Emperor Hadrian, who is devastated after his lover Antinous drowns in the Nile River. While matters of state encroach on his grief and advisers clamor for war against a radical new threat to the Empire, Hadrian slips out of time to re-encounter the vision and reality of Antinous—and learn the truth about what happened on the Nile.
There are seven performances between October 13-27 and tickets are available online.
Barihunk Brian James Myer will take on the role of Mercutio in the Hawaii Opera Theatre's new production of Gounod's Romeo & Juliet. Soprano Amanda Woodbury, who sang the role at The Met will sing Juliet, in a cast that also includes Derek Taylor as Romeo, Alyssa Martin as Stephano, Jamie Offenbach as Frère Laurent, Carlos Enrique Santell as Tybalt and Blythe Kelsey as Gertrude.
The opera was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris on April 27, 1867 and is most notable for the series of four duets for the main characters and the Juliet's oft-performed waltz song "Je veux vivre."
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has inspired all kinds of music, including songs, operas, symphonic poems, Broadway musicals and film scores. Perhaps the most famous musical example is Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story. Remarkably, there are dozens of operas based on the story, but only Gounod's has consistently remained in the repertory. In fact, Brian James Myer just performed in est Side Story at the Grand Teton Music Festival.
Performances are on October 12, 14 and 16 and tickets are available HERE.
