Saturday, January 14, 2017

Reader submission: Bass-barihunk Christopher Besch

Christopher Besch
A reader alerted us to bass-barihunk Christopher Besch, who will be appearing as Nourabad in Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) with Opera in the Heights from February 3-12 in Houston, Texas.

Besch perviously performed with the company in Rossini’s La Cenerentola with Opera and he created the role of Peter Gray in John L. Cornelius II and Janine Joseph's Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline with Houston Grand Opera’s HGOco, which commissions new chamber operas and song projects about contemporary life. He also portrayed Theseus in Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Rice University.

Besch is in his second year of studies for the Doctorate of Musical Arts program at Rice University, where he is the Malcolm W. Perkins Teaching Fellow. He was a semi-finalist for the 2012 Eleanor McCollum Competition at the Houston Grand Opera, one of the Rocky Mountain and Gulf Coast Regional Finalists for the Metropolitan National Council Auditions, and placed in the Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition, and was awarded the Harold Norblum Award through Opera Colorado.

Besch has lots of Bach on his agenda this season, including motets with the Bach Society Houston in February, the St. John Passion with the Bach Society Houston in April, Herr Gott, dich loben wir (BWV 16) and Der Geist hilft (BWV 226) in June with the same ensemble and an appearance at the 2017 Leipzig Bach Festival in Germany in June.

Christopher Besch sings Hahn's A Chloris:

The Pearl Fishers will be directed by John De Los Santos, who staged the Fort Worth Opera's stunning production in 2014. The cast also features the real-life husband and wife team of Eric Bowden and Lindsay Russell as the romantic leads Nadir and Leïla, as well as Octavio Moreno as Zurga.

Tickets are on sale online. Opera in the Heights presents affordable, staged performances for emerging artists in the Greater Houston Area.

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