Attitude magazine: "Get Your Rock Off"

Duncan Rock featured in Attitude

Aussie barihunk Duncan Rock generated international buzz when he recently appeared in "Don Giovanni: The Opera" at London's Heaven. The updated, gender bending version of the Mozart-Da Ponte classic rubbed some of the old-timers the wrong way, but young audiences ate it up.

Attitude, which bills itself as the U.K.'s largest LGBT magazine, recently did a feature on the ripped redhead with the great headline "Get Your Rock Off." We couldn't possibly improve on that! We also love that gave a nice shout out to Barihunks, writing:

Rock has featured heavily on the inspired website Barihunks (baritone hunks, obvs), which shows male opera singers in a state of undress. So what happened to opera's rep for the larger gentlemen? "A lot of the roles, particularly the ones for a young baritone voice, now require certain physical characteristics," Rock explains. "For certain roles, for dramatic credibility, people expect a certain look, but opera is an art form that is all about beautiful singing and that will never change."

Fortunately for Rock, his voice is as beautiful as his physique.

Check out a preview of the ENO's Billy Budd featuring Duncan Rock:

We first discovered Duncan Rock when he was in Britten's Billy Budd at Glyndebourne and he's back in the same opera at the English National Opera. Rock will be performing the role of Donald. Performance are running from June 12-July 12. He remains on the ENO roster for a run of Bizet's Carmen beginning in November where he takes on the role of Moralès. Visit the ENO website for tickets and additional information.

Duncan Rock: Master-OF-Arms

CONTACT US AT Barihunks@gmail.com

Peter Grimes Premiered June 7, 1945

Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Ned Keene at The Met

Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes" is certainly not a "barihunk opera" like "Billy Budd" or "Rape of Lucretia," but it is one opera's greatest pieces of theater. The opera premiered on June 7, 1945 and was the first opera to be performed at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre near the end of the Second World War.

Britten’s first full length, and possibly best known, opera originated in part from the composer’s reading of the article ‘George Crabbe: the Poet and the Man’ by E.M. Forster, which appeared in The Listener in May 1941. It was through Forster that Britten developed an interest in the work of Crabbe, a fellow East Anglian, a curate as well as a writer born in the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh on the east coast of England in 1754. Peter Pears purchased a volume of Crabbe’s poetry shortly after Britten read Forster’s article and, as he was later to inscribe in the flyleaf of the book, it was from his and Britten’s reading of the long poem ‘The Borough’ that “we started work on the plans for making an opera out of Peter Grimes”.

Britten and Pears were at the time resident in the United States and had of course come into contact with a number of American musicians and music lovers. They met Serge Koussevitzky, the Russian born American conductor who became a champion of the young composer’s work. The Koussevitzky Music Foundation was set up to support the encouragement of new music and it was through this that Britten was awarded a $1,000 commission to write an opera. Britten realised his debt of gratitude to the conductor and the opera is dedicated to the memory of Koussevitsky’s wife Natalie. It was Koussevitsky’s request that Britten’s manuscript of the full score of Peter Grimes remain in America and it can seen at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

Philip Langridge: "Old Joe has gone fishing":

In 1942 Britten and Pears returned to England, but it was not until January 1944 that work was begun on the opera. Composition took place while Britten was living in the converted Mill in Snape, five miles from Aldeburgh. The scenario was selected from one section of George Crabbe’s poem about the lives of people on the Suffolk coast. For Crabbe, Peter Grimes was a sadistic figure whose rough ways earn little sympathy from the reader. The character is, however, depicted somewhat differently in Britten’s opera. The story was adapted by Montagu Slater, with the assistance of Britten, Pears, Ronald Duncan and Eric Crozier. The Grimes of Britten’s opera, although isolated and at times violent, is more to be pitied than despised. In the words of Peter Pears he is ‘neither a hero, nor a villain’.

 [Material adapted from Britten-Pears Foundation]

 Contact us at Barihunks@gmail.com