Barihunk Hadleigh Adams featured in Opera News

Hadleigh Adams in Opera News (photo by Dario Acosta)

Barihunk Hadleigh Adams, who will open on July 31 as The Duke in Thomas Adès' "Powder Her Face," is the August feature in Opera News' Sound Bites. The performance in Oakland's historic train station with West Edge Opera has proven so popular with ticket buyers, that the innovative company has just added a fourth performance. The production also includes hunkentenor Jonathan Blalock.

We will be posting a more extensive piece on the production next week. Tickets are available online.

Barihunk André Courville featured in Opera News

André Courville (photo by Dario Acosta)

André Courville (photo by Dario Acosta)

Barihunk André Courville is featured in Opera News accompanied by two gorgeous photos from New York photographer Dario Acosta. Here is the feature from Sound Bites in Opera News:

ANDRÉ COURVILLE began to sing the “Air du tambour-major,” from Thomas’s Caïd, at Los Angeles’s Loren L. Zachary Society Competition last May, and suddenly there was no doubt who was going to take home the $12,500 top prize. It was one of those jaw-dropping moments when you sense a singer stepping into his own brilliant future. Courville’s basso cantante has both smooth richness and bite, and the Thomas aria was an inspired choice. “It has a fun melody, fast runs at the end, high notes and legato line,” says the twenty-nine-year-old Courville. “It has everything. I didn’t see it as a competition, though. I always have the same objective—to reach the audience and make them feel something. It’s a performance for me, whether or not I’m competing for a prize or a job.” This May, he is bass soloist in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, with the Cecilia Chorus of New York at Carnegie Hall.

[Continue reading at OPERA NEWS. They do not allow for full article reprints]