Baritone Thriving in San Francisco Opera Scene

Baritone Hadleigh Adams, New Zealand’s first San Francisco Opera Adler Fellowship recipient, talks with the Huffington Post’s cultural critic Sean Martinfield about his latest performance, in American composer Gabriel Kahane’s The Memory Palace, an “unusual work which deals with emotional connections to physical space.”

“I’m always very cautious to use the words Pop and Classical,” Adams said, “Because you’re bound to offend someone. In The Memory Palace, there’s a kind-of narrator. One song is set in World War II, another is about two people reminiscing about when the Underberg Building, a kitchen supplies building in New York got torn down.”

“My passion above all is to tell a story,” he said. “That may sound very generic, but it’s not. I love singing a great deal. I love the form of opera and recital.

“My aim is to take people deep inside themselves, to feel something so real, but, at the same time, outside of themselves.”

This coming season at San Francisco Opera, Hadleigh appears in, amongst others, Tosca (a Jailer), La Traviata (the Marquis) and Madame Butterfly (Imperial Commissioner).

Adams is a graduate of the San Francisco 2012 Merola Opera Program. He was a member of New Zealand Opera from 2004 to 2008.

Original article by Sean Martinfield, The Huffington Post, March 26, 2014.

Photo courtesy of SF Opera Center.