Sexy photos of Hadleigh Adams in Quartett; Opening today at West Edge Opera

Heather Buck and Hadleigh Adams (Photo: Cory Weaver)

Bass-barihunk Hadleigh Adams is headling this year's West Edge Opera Summer Festival in Luca Francesconi’s Quartett, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. The enigmatic and controversial opera is based on the 1982 play by the [East] German playwright Heiner Muller (itself based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liasions dangereuses), which emphasized the author's abiding concerns, including the inherent cruelty of human existence, the way all relationships ultimately come down to struggles for possession and defeat of "the other."

Elkhanah Pulitzer is directing three performances, which opens tonight and has additional performances on August 16 and 19 at the Craneway Conference Center in Richmond, California, which is a former Ford assembly plant on the  San Francisco Bay designed by the legendary industrial architect Albert Kahn. West Edge Opera has become renowned for their choice of unusual and interesting locations to stage their operas.

Heather Buck and Hadleigh Adams (Photo: Cory Weaver)

Hadleigh Adams will perform the role of the Vicomte de Valmont, joined by soprano Heather Buck as the Marquise de Merteuil. The Marquise de Merteuil and the Viscount de Valmont are trapped in a salon having renounced all sense of love and play seductive mind games taking on the roles of the lovers Tourvel and Volanges. Hence, the title Quartett.

Composer Luca Francesconi described the piece as a challenge to our ideas of opera, of society, of the dominance of Western thinking: “Don’t dare to come if you can't accept that you need to analyze what you do and who you are. This piece is violent, it’s sex, it’s blasphemy, it’s the absence of mercy.”

Heather Buck and Hadleigh Adams (Photo: Cory Weaver)

The opera was originally commissioned by La Scala and has since been performed at the Royal Opera in London, Vienna, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Rouen, and at the Spoleto Festival. The score features two orchestras: a live chamber orchestra with electronics, and a recorded full orchestra and chorus created for the La Scala Premiere.

The remainder of West Edge Opera's season includes Claude Debussy’s lone opera Pélleas and Mélisande, with tenor David Blalock and Kendra Broom in the title roles, along with Efrain Solis as Golaud, contralto Malin Fritz as Geneviéve, and bass-baritone Philip Skinner singing the role of King Arkel. Remaining performances are on August 12 and17

Heather Buck and Hadleigh Adams (Photo: Cory Weaver)

The final offering is Matt Marks and Paul Peers’ Mata Hari, which originally premiered at the New York’s Prototype Festival in January of 2017. The cast includes mezzo-soprano Molly Mahoney as Sister Leonide,  tenor Samuel Faustine as Vadime, and Daniel Cilli, Nikolas Nackley and Jason Sarten as the military men that become Mata Hari’s lovers and targets. There is one remaining performance on August 18.

Tickets for all three shows are available online.

After Quartett, Hadleigh Adams returns to his home base at the San Francisco Opera to sing Angelotti in Puccini's Tosca this Fall with Carmen Giannattasio in the title role and tenor Brian Jagde as her lover. 

Robin Adams in sexually charged Quartett at Liceu

Robin Adams and Allison Cook in Quartett

Barihunk Robin Adams is singing Luca Francesconi's two-person opera Quartett along with soprano Allison Cook a the Liceu Opera Barcelona. The opera is a re-reading of Heiner Müller's play based on Les liaisons dangereuses and reflects on the decadence of certain classes of society.

The libretto revolves around two ex-lovers who get caught up in a game of seduction that can only end in death. The Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Viscomte de Valmont to seduce her niece Cécile, who is a virgin, but he opts instead to lead Madame de Tourvel, a faithful wife, astray.

Francesconi’s score calls for a massive sound design, and demands two distinct orchestras – one of which is pre-recorded and electronically treated, the sound sent flying over the heads of the audiences.

The composer once said of this piece, "Don’t dare to come if you can't accept that you need to analyse what you do and who you are. This piece is violent, it’s sex, it’s blasphemy, it’s the absence of mercy. The only two characters in the opera are the definition of cynical, they have made a pact that they don’t have to love any more. Love and sentiment are banned, the only thing that’s left and that matters is a kind of chess game with people's souls and bodies. So don’t come if you have problems in your relationship, you might discover something you might not want to! But do dare to come if you can face the reality of how dried up your heart is, how little space there is in your feelings for anything that doesn’t come from being self-defensive, from being totally scared by the world. We are prisoners of our fears. That’s the real last message of this piece, that we can no longer hide our problems – and that we shouldn’t."

The opera runs through March 3rd and tickets are available online.