Tall, rugged baritone Hadleigh Adams, 29, must be one of the straightest spined and proudest bearinged singers on the planet. Both his appearance and his lower-pitched, resonant voice make it hard to believe that during his youth in a small New Zealand farm town, two decades before he journeyed to San Francisco and was chosen for San Francisco Opera's prestigious Adler Fellow apprentice program, he was teased mercilessly for being gay.
"I acted very different," he explained during an hour-long chat in a cafe near the War Memorial Opera House. "I acted very effeminately. Not by choice; it's just how I was."
This didn't make life easy for him at an all-boys school.
"I wanted to fit in," he says. "I was two years ahead in my academic work because I was a smart kid. I played hockey and tennis, which were the gayer sports from a high-school boy point of view. I also did a lot of music, and I loved music. If you loved music, that meant you were gay.
"So it was horrible. I was teased a lot, and had very few friends. But I didn't really mind it or care, because while I loved my family and my country, which is the most beautiful place in the world, I always knew I was destined for more than a lot of my classmates. Not to say that more is better, or being on the stage or escaping is better, but I knew, from the age of 12 or 13, that I was destined for more in my life."
Some of that destiny became apparent to music-lovers on March 31, when Hadleigh joined several other Adlers for a wonderful Schwabacher Debut Recital conceived, coached and accompanied by the brilliant gay song promoter Steven Blier. In the undeniable standout performance of the afternoon, Hadleigh brought to Gabriel Kahane's song cycle The Memory Place singing as idiomatic, convincing, and virile as John Raitt did for the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Behind his stylistic integrity and deep emotional identification with his songs' subject matter, he exhibited a rare vulnerability in the final song "Rochester," which addressed individual and collective complicity in a horrible suicide.
"When I sang that song, I thought of a very good friend of mine who committed suicide while I was in high school," he says. "I could have gone many ways in my performance, but in the end, I just wanted to be honest with a couple hundred people. That was a very, very hard thing to do, because you don't always want to be honest. But you know that you have to be, because if you aren't, you're lying. You can tell when people are lying."
As Hadleigh, at age 18, knew about himself. He had first sensed he was "different" at age 7, when he had feelings for another boy that were "more than admiration." Eleven year later, the smart kid who was already in his second year of a Bachelors of Music program at the University of Auckland found himself as a music leader and head of the worship team in a famed 6,000-member Pentecostal Church in New Zealand.
"I was praying and praying and praying, and I knew that my attractions weren't going away," he reports. "One evening, when I couldn't sleep, I went down to this area called The Chauncery. On the back of a fountain I read, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, 'To thine own self be true, [And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.]'
"I remember sitting at the fountain thinking, 'If God has given me this, it can't be wrong. And if God hasn't given me this, you can't pick and choose the verses of Leviticus that you like.' It's all been said before, but suffice to say, I came out the next day. I told my flatmates, and then went home to tell my family."
It wasn't until close to the end of our conversation that Hadleigh let slip that his father, upon hearing the news, disowned him.
"But I didn't mind," he says. "I never minded, because I knew he was going to. When you know something is going to happen, it doesn't hurt as much. It's a real shame for him. I'm really sad for him. But Mom's fine, and my siblings are great."
Where to now?
This spring and summer, Hadleigh sings small roles in San Francisco Opera's La Traviata (June 11-July 13) and Madama Butterfly (June 15-July 9). His fall is bigger and busier. In a short span of time, he not only sings the far more important role of Schaunard in all productions of La Boheme , but also performs the Jailor in Tosca and covers (stands by, to step in just in case) the major role of Dandini in La Cenerentola. Many a major artist's big break has come when they've stepped into a role at the 11th hour.
If Hadleigh stays in the Bay Area, he hopes to present a recital that follows the narrative of his life, including his coming out. All he knows for certain is that he wants to make a solid career singing at the top level in opera or music theater.
"I love and adore music theater," he declares. "I think it's grossly undervalued. There's an immediacy that I think opera doesn't have in this day and age because of all the trappings. I'm not saying music theater is more successful; I'm saying that's how it can often appear. And the music is of course more representative of what people would hear day to day.
"If I could sing Sondheim for the rest of my life, I'd be very happy. There's a freedom to music theater that I think is more difficult to have with opera. Into the Woods would be amazing. Les Miz, Oklahoma, Kiss me Kate �" there's so much out there."
Final question: Does he find any connection between his sexual orientation and his identity as a singer?
"I don't," he says without blinking. "Maybe I will someday. But my main concern is for the art and the form, and saying words that mean something. I think, at the end of the day, whether you're gay, straight, or transgendered, that's what any artist desires."
For tickets to San Francisco Opera, go to sfopera.com/Season-Tickets/2013-14-Season.aspx or call 1 (415) 864-3330. For Hadleigh Adams' phone number �" he's single �" camp out at the stage door.