Gary Griffiths (photo from Oedipus Rex, Barbara Aumüller -left)
Welsh barihunk Gary Griffiths is making his Oper Frankfurt debut in a double bill of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, both of which deal with suppressed fears. He is singing Creon in Oedipus Rex and Robert in Iolanta. Fellow barihunk Brandon Cedel will perform the Messenger in Oedipus Rex.
Iolanta was Tchaikovsky's last opera and was first performed in 1892, the same year his Nutcracker ballet exploded onto the scene, keeps Iolanta's process of realization very focused on a musical level – in a one act work with a vivid, brightly colored, shimmering musical language.
Stravinsky and Jean Cocteau, on the other hand, fully intended to reach monumental heights in two acts. They created a mixture of music stereotypes and patterns: fateful, pulsating rhythms combine with harmonies, influences drawn from the Middle Ages, Russian orthodox church music and folk music, classic and jazz.
Griffiths was the winner of the Welsh Singers Competition in 2012 and a finalist representing Wales in the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where, in 2009, he won the Gold Medal Competition.
Performances run through November 25 and tickets are available online.
Barihunk Robert Sims will perform the Brahms German Requiem with the Oakland Symphony on November 16th. He will be joined by soprano Patricia Westley under the baton of Michael Morgan.
The piece will be paired with the premiere of Richard Marriott's Ghost Ship Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, which has nothing to do with the ghost ship at the center of Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. Instead, it memorializes the 36 people who were killed on December 2, 2016 at the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland where a house music party was being performed.
In the late 1850’s, Brahms began a cantata of mourning, possibly influenced by Robert Schumann’s death in 1856. By 1861, he had selected several biblical texts and arranged a four-movement cantata.
After his mother’s death in 1865, he took up the work again and during the next two years the Requiem began to take its final shape. Brahms did not take his text from the Roman Catholic Mass of the Dead, as had other composers before him. His intention was to select Old and New Testament texts that not only mourn the dead but also give comfort to the living. The texts he chose were taken exclusively from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible; hence the title, A German Requiem, to distinguish it from the Latin Requiem of the Catholic liturgy. However, Brahms later mentioned that he would gladly have left out the word “German” and put “Mankind” in its place.
Rossini's opera Guillaume Tell (William Tell) has regrettably become best known for its overture, parts of which became the Lone Ranger theme, but it is also a highly entertaining opera with great music for all the key characters.
The Theater an der Wien just wrapped up an updated version of the opera with barihunks Jérôme Varnier as Melchtal and Edwin Crossley-Mercer as Walter Fürst.
Torsten Fischer’s production about the Swiss marksman who shot his people to freedom keeps the story relevant to today by making us think about the universal abuses of power. Melcthal stands on a massive steel floor that descends on the masses, while Walter Fürst dons the robe of the dictator portending an endless cycle of oppression.
Jérôme Varnier(Photo: Herwig Prammer)
The run of Guillaume Tell wrapped up on October 27th, but the Theater an der Wien continues with Handel's Teseo and Weber's Euryanthe with Andrew Foster-Williams.
Edwin Crossley-Mercer can next be heard in Mozart's Requiem at the Opéra de Toulon on November 9th and then singing Schubert's Winterreise at the Nantes Festival on November 28th.
Jérôme Varnier will appear in Thomas' Hamlet at the Opéra Comique in Paris opening on December 17th.
British/Australian barihunk Duncan Rock will make his principal role debut with Opera Queensland in the title role of Mozar'ts Don Giovanni, which runs through November 2nd. He'll be joined in the cast by Shaun Brown as Leporello, Eva Kong as Donna Anna, Virgilio Marino as Don Ottavio, Hayley Sugars as Donna Elvira, Samuel Piper as Masetto, Katie Stenzel as Zerlina and Andrew Collins as The Commendatore.
After his run of Don Giovanni, he heads to The Metropolitan Opera to sing Schaunard in Puccini's La bohème from November 29-Deccember 13 and Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute on January 3rd.
Davóne Tines will star in the world premiere of five-time Grammy winner Terence
Blanchard and filmmaker Kasi Lemmons’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” at the Opera
Theater of St. Louis this summer. The opera is based on the memoir of New York Times
columnist and political commentator Charles Blow. This is the composer's second work for the company, following his highly successful "Champion," which premiered in 2013 and was subsequently performed at Opera Parallèle and the Washington National Opera.
The libretto for Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a soul-baring story of Blow's experiences growing up in Gibsland,
Louisiana, including violence and the sexual abuse he endured from a relative.
The opera will also feature rising stars Julia Bullock in three roles and Karen Slack as Blow's mother. All three artists are making their Opera
Theater of St. Louis mainstage debuts.
“Fire Shut Up in My Bones” will premiere on June 15, 2019 at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and run for six performances. Additional information is available online.
Davóne Tines also recently premiered The Black Clown, with text that the singer adapted from Langston Hughes. The piece deals a
Black man’s resilience against a legacy of oppression.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who was broadly viewed as one of the greatest opera baritones of our times, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in the summer of 2015 and died at the age of 55 on November 22, 2017 in London where he lived with his family.
There were few baritones as compelling on stage as Dmitri
Hvorostovsky and only a few in history who matched his box office draw. His name will forever be associated with "legato" and
perhaps only Montserrat Caballe or Zinka Milanov could sing with such
glorious breath control and float silken sounds into the theater.
Along
with Mariusz Kwiecien, he was one of the original inspirations for the
Barihunks blog.
Half of Dmitri Hvorostovsky's ashes were laid to rest at Novodevichy Cemetery
He was born on October 16, 1962 and shot to fame in 1989 when he won the Cardiff Singer of the World
competition in a legendary showdown with Bryn Terfel. Hvorostovsky
sang two arias from Verdi, Rodrigo's aria "O Carlo, ascolta" from Don Carlo and "Eri tu che macchiavi" from Un ballo in maschera, as well as "Ja vas lyublyu" from Tchikovsky's Queen of Spades. The late, great soprano Elizabeth Soderström, who was one of the judges
in 1989, famously marked a series of exclamation marks on her scorecard
as she listened to Hvorostovsky sing. The music world was instantly abuzz with stories
about a baritone who looked as beautiful as he sounded.
University of Oregon/KWAX radio's tribute to Dmitri Hvorostovsky:
After his brain cancer diagnosis, he cancelled concerts in Kaliningrad, Minsk, the Georges
Enesco Festival, Tanglewood and Vienna, as
well as the Met's performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, but made a brief return for a concert in Toronto and appeared at the Met Gala.
His career took him to all the world’s major opera houses and
renowned international festivals, including Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, San Francisco Opera, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opera,
Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Salzburg Festival, La Scala Milan, Vienna
State Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings "Il balen" from Il trovatore:
His extensive discography includes 30 recitals, numerous complete operas
on CD and DVD, and the award-winning film "Don Giovanni Unmasked" where
he performed the dual roles of Don Giovanni and Leporello. On November
10, 2017, he released his first recording of Verdi's Rigoletto, on which he sings the title role.
There were memorial concerts in his honor at The Royal Opera in London and at Zankel Hall in New York City.
Luis Alejandro Orozco(Photos: C. Stanley & Tim Trumble)
Mexican-American barihunk Luis Alejandro Orozco will sing the role of Marcello in Puccini's La bohème, which will launch the 25th anniversary season of the Opera Santa Barbara on November 9 and 11. Tickets are available online.
He'll be joined in the cast by Vincent Grana as Colline, Eleni Calenos as Mimi, Elle Valera as Musetta, Nathan Granner as Rodolfo and Yazid Gray as Schaunard.
The rest of the Opera Santa Barbara season includes Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin with barihunk Lee Poulis in the title role and Robert Ward's The Crucible with bass-barihunk Colin Ramsey as Reverend John Hale.
Luis Alejandro sings "Where is the life that late I led" from Kiss Me, Kate:
Orozco made his Opera Santa Barbara debut in 2014 as Assan in Menotti's The Consul, and returned as Taddeo in Rossini's L’italiana in Algeri in 2015 and as Belcore in Donizetti's The Elixir of Love in 2016.
He will return to the role of Marcello in April with the Anchorage Opera. In the meantime, one can hear him as Watty Watkins in Lady Be Good at the Teatro di San Carlo and Riolobo in Florencia en el Amazonas with Pensacola Opera.
