Rehearsal photos of Hadleigh Adams in Bajazet

 

We have rehearsal pictures of barihunk Hadleigh Adams, who is getting ready for the Southern Hemisphere premiere of Vivaldi's Bajazet at Australia's Pinchgut Opera. Adams is returning to Pinchgut after a successful run as Pollux in their production of Rameau's Castor & Pollux in 2012. Adams has also been prominently featured in the company's recent advertising campaign including online banners, print ads and outdoor advertising.

Bajazet, a rarely performed operatic tragedy, premiered in Verona in 1735 and is a pastiche of Vivaldi's own arias, as well as those by Johann Adolph Hasse, Geminiano Giacomelli, Nicola Porpora and Riccardo Broschi. The opera is also known as Il Tamerlano and the story was also successfully set to music by Handel.

Counter-tenor Christopher Lowrey and Hadleigh Adams (Photo: Bridget Elliott)

The libretto revolves around romantic entanglements and love triangles and the struggle for power between Bajazet, ruler of the Turks, and Tamerlano, ruler of the Tartars. When Bajazet’s daughter Asteria is threatened with marriage to the invading ruler, she conspires to murder him. The plot thickens after Tamerlano’s former betrothed, Irene, turns up to reveal the scheme, having taken issue with being pushed aside onto Andronico, Tamerlano’s Greek ally, who is also in love with Asteria.

Vivaldi wove into the opera an underlying tale of power struggles and invasion, reflective of the ones going on at the time, when Neopolitan operas were trouncing their local Venetian counterparts in popularity. Music associated with Neapolitan composers is thus cleverly designated to the invaders Tamerlano, Irene and Andronico.

Counter-tenor Christopher Lowrey and Hadleigh Adams (Photo: Bridget Elliott)

Performances of Vivaldi’s Bajazet will be on July 4, 5, 7 and 8 at City Recital Hall Angel Place in Sydney.  Also in the cast is Christopher Lowrey as Tamerlano, Helen Sherman as Irene, Emily Edmonds as Asteria and Russell Harcourt as Andronicus. Tickets and additional production information is available online.

Adams has been a regular at the San Francisco Opera, after participating in the Merola Opera Program and becoming an Adler Fellow with the company. He performed a number of roles with the company, including Schaunard in La bohéme, Simon in Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Marquis in La Traviata, the Grand commissioner in Madame Butterfly and the Jailer in Tosca. He also performed Gendarme in Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias with San Francisco's innovative young company Opera Parallèle. He made quite a splash in baroque opera when he performed Claudius in Opera Omaha's production of Handel's Agrippina, which was dubbed by us as the "HOTTEST OPERA CAST" in our Best of 2014 feature.