Jerry Hadley

Jerry Hadley, opera singer and recitalist: born Princeton, Illinois 16 June 1952; married 1976 Cheryll Drake (two sons; marriage dissolved); died Poughkeepsie, New York 18 July 2007.

Jerry Hadley was an obscure, 26-year-old tenor just beginning his professional career when in 1978 he sang for the National Opera Institute Auditions in Chicago. In the audience was Beverly Sills, who had just become director of the New York City Opera, and she offered the young singer a contract. Within five years he had appeared in several American cities, started an international career at the Vienna State Opera, followed by Glyndebourne and Covent Garden; within a decade he had made his début at the Metropolitan, New York and established a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic as a fine lyric tenor, with a beautiful, flexible voice, who was also an excellent actor.

Hadley was born in Princeton, Illinois in 1952. He studied first at Bradley University, Peoria, as a choral conductor, then at the University of Illinois. However, his thoughts were veering more and more in the direction of a singing career. He sang Tamino in The Magic Flute and other roles while still at university and also acquired a singing teacher, Thomas LoMonaco, in New York. In 1976 he enrolled as an apprentice in the Lake George Opera Festival, and found himself singing Ferrando in Così fan tutte. He made his official professional début in 1978 at Sarasota, Florida, as Lionel in Flotow's Martha and the following year joined the New York City Opera.

Hadley made his NYCO début as Arturo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and sang a few other small roles. In his second season he moved on to Rodolfo in La bohème and Nadir in The Pearl Fishers. Nadir was particularly successful, as Bizet's music fitted the tenor's voice at that period quite perfectly.

In 1979 he started an association with the Opera Theater of St Louis, taking part in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos; the following year he sang Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff and in 1982, Ferrando in Così fan tutte. The same year, at Artpark, Lewiston, New York, he sang Tom Rakewell in a performance of The Rake's Progress to mark the centenary of Stravinsky's birth. Tom Rakewell was to become one of Hadley's finest characteristions.

Starting his international career in 1982 in Vienna, Hadley sang Nemorino in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, followed by Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly and the Italian Singer in Der Rosenkavalier. He made his British début the following year at Glyndebourne, as Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo, which was very well received, and his Covent Garden début in 1984 as Fenton in Falstaff. He returned frequently to Covent Garden in later years, as the Duke in Rigoletto, as Rodolfo in La bohème and, in 1992, as the title role of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Of all these roles, Hoffmann was the most interesting; Hadley's voice had grown by then, without losing its lyrical quality, while dramatically he was equally good as drunken poet and ardent lover.

Hadley made his very successful Metropolitan début in March 1987, singing Des Grieux in Massenet's Manon. Massenet was another composer whose music suited the tenor's voice; he had sung the title role of Werther at New York City Opera the previous year, exciting great admiration. At the Met, where he continued to sing for a dozen years, his roles included Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Alfredo in La traviata and Tom Rakewell. In Chicago, he sang a notable Pelléas in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. In 1988 he sang Tom Rakewell in San Francisco, returning for Nemorino, Des Grieux and Julien in Charpentier's Louise.

Hadley was now at the peak of his career; he spent roughly half of each year in America and half in Europe. He also gave many song recitals, accompanied by his wife, the pianist Cheryll Drake. The programmes of these recitals always included one or other of Britten's song-cycles, of which the tenor was very fond. He spent quite a lot of time in the recording studio, where his repertory extended from the enormously difficult and high role of Riccardo Percy in Donizetti's Anna Bolena, which he recorded with Joan Sutherland, to Bernstein's Candide and Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio.

Hadley returned to Covent Garden in 1993 as Faust in Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, then later that year he sang Benedict in a concert performance of another Berlioz opera, Béatrice et Bénédict at the Royal Festival Hall. Throughout the 1990s he was in excellent form, singing Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor and Gounod's Roméo et Juliette in Dallas; and Tom Rakewell, followed by Jimmy Mahoney in Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at the Salzburg Festival. He also took part in two world premieres, as Don Luis in Myron Fink's The Conquistador at San Diego in 1997; and as Jay Gatsby in John Horbison's The Great Gatsby at the Metropolitan in 1999. He repeated Gatsby in Chicago the following year.

However, his first attempt at the title role of Mozart's Idomeneo at Santa Fe in 1999 was not a great success. Hadley returned to Salzburg in 2001 to sing Laca in Janácek's Jenufa, then tried Steva in the same opera at Covent Garden; neither role suited him very well. His Aschenbach in Britten's Death in Venice at Florence was greatly admired, but as Tito in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito at Amsterdam and Cavaradossi in Tosca at New Orleans in 2002, he was considered miscast and in poor vocal shape. The premiere of William Bolcom's A Wedding, in which he sang the minor role of Luigi - in good voice - was successfully performed in Chicago in 2004.

He died just over a week after shooting himself in an apparent suicide attempt.

Elizabeth Forbes