Jerry Hadley

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Jerry Hadley, born June 16, 1952, is an American operatic tenor, who was a protegé of the famous soprano, Dame Joan Sutherland, and her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge. He was reared in Manlius, Illinois, and attended Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

Jerry Hadley, after study in his native Illinois and roles in American regional companies, was snapped up by Beverly Sills, who had heard him in the National Opera Institute auditions in 1978 and offered him a New York City Opera contract on the spot. He commenced vocal training with renowned vocal teacher Dr. Thomas Lo Monaco in 1978.

Jerry Hadley first studied to become a conductor but after four years turned to singing. His early years as a singer were spent in regional opera houses in the U.S. He then became a regular member of the roster of the New York City Opera after his debut as Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor.

In 1982 he made his first appearance at the Vienna State Opera as Nemorino in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore. He has frequently performed at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the San Diego Opera and the Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals.

He is known for both his interpretations of lyric tenor opera roles and his performances of Broadway musicals, operetta, and popular music. One of his best-selling recordings was the EMI three-CD recording of the complete score of Show Boat, conducted by John McGlinn. Hadley sang the role of Gaylord Ravenal.

He has sung the tenor roles of the bel canto repertory (Il Barbiere di Siviglia, L'elisir d'amore, Anna Bolena, La bohème, Lucia di Lammermoor) as well as Mozart (Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, La clemenza di Tito) and the French Romantics (Les contes d'Hoffmann, Faust). He has sung the role of Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" for much of his career, first performing it while a graduate student at the University of Illinois. Hadley created the role of Don Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, in Myron Fink's 1993 opera, The Conquistador, and the title role in John Harbison's 1999 The Great Gatsby, based on the novel of the same name. He created the tenor lead role in Sir Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio.

In 1996, Jerry Hadley commissioned composer Daniel Steven Crafts to create music for selected poems by Carl Sandburg. The work, The Song and The Slogan, premiered in 2000 and was made into a PBS video, which won an Emmy Award for Best Musical Performance by the Mid-America Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Recently, he has added the lead role in Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. With Richard Bonynge, he has made many recordings in the bel canto genre, and the late Leonard Bernstein selected him to sing the title role in a complete recording of his operetta Candide (which Bernstein himself conducted). It was one of the conductor's very last projects. The performance was also filmed for television.