Les Enfants Terribles with Opera Parallele This Weekend

This weekend Opera Parallèle is presenting the Philip Glass opera based on the Jean Cocteau film Les Enfants Terribles, about a strange pair of teenage orphans whose incestuous fantasy games expand into a quartet of mismatched lovers. Playing the brother Paul, with whom everyone becomes infatuated, is baritone Hadleigh Adams above.

Last Saturday, at the Unitarian Church on Franklin, press and supporters were invited to a preview/open rehearsal of scenes from the opera led by Artistic Director Nicole Paiement who will be conducting, and Creative Director Brian Staufenbiel who explained how the elaborate production involving a mixture of film and static projections is supposed to work.

Earlier in the week, Philip Glass accepted an invitation to check out the production, and he spent an entire day as a member of the rehearsal team before being the guest of honor at a gala concert that evening at the Gordon Getty mansion with the Opera Parallèle company. After flying back on a red-eye to New York that same night, he called and said that he was so delighted with what he had seen of the production so far that he would be returning this weekend to see it onstage. Now that's a testimonial.

Hadleigh Adams and soprano Rachel Schultz as his manipulative sister Elisabeth were sounding in very good voice, and according to Paiement the score written for three pianos is a colorful wonder.

Schutz above (seated next to musical assistant William Long) mentioned in a Q&A session at the end of the rehearsal that, being a high soprano, she is usually cast as a goody-goody ingenue, but playing a more twisted character has turned out to be an unexpected pleasure.

It is too bad that I won't be in town for any of this weekend's performances, but if you are interested, click here to buy tickets. You may end up sitting next to Philip Glass.