”This is his first press conference,” jokes Jerry Hadley, proudly dandling 6-month-old Nathan, the firstborn of Hadley and his wife, Cheryll, on his knee. Nathan Andrew Hadley is obviously a scene stealer, smiling inquisitively at the visiting interviewer before his mother arrives to take him on a shopping expedition. Watching them go, Hadley remarks, ”He`s just the most mellow, wonderfully happy child you`ve ever seen in your life.”
Hadley senior says he is convinced that Hadley junior got his benign disposition from listening to the dulcet strains of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
”The whole time Nathan was in utero, I was singing Mozart opera roles. Mommy heard 12 performances of my Tamino in `Die Zauberfloete` in Geneva, all the `Cosi Fan Tuttes` I did last year in Chicago and another 12 or 13 performances of `Magic Flute` last winter in Vienna. I sang to him when he was inside mommy`s tummy. So he heard mostly Mozart, no pun intended. So far, the only composer he doesn`t like is Debussy.”
Hadley-the very model of the all-American singer who made good, the Peoria farm boy who, in a relatively short time, has become one of the leading operatic and concert tenors of his generation-says fatherhood has lent new impetus to his career, changing his life in ways he hadn`t expected.
”Since my son was born, it has brought my life into focus and a lot of my other interests as well. I`m still ambitious about my career and about the goals I`d like to achieve. But there are times when my wife and I are sitting at home playing with Nathan and I think, `This is nice, too. I like this.` I find the time I spend on stage is a lot more fulfilling now than before. I just feel a lot calmer and more open.
”If the Cubs could just win one pennant, then everything would be perfect!”
With remarkable success as an opera singer already a fact, the 36-year-old Hadley is finding out what it`s like to be on the brink of crossing from singer to star.
Tall, slender, boyishly handsome, he looks as good as he sounds on stage, and his lyric tenor, an instrument of uncommon beauty, nuance, intelligence and style, has won him rave notices from Vienna to San Francisco. He will make his ”official” debut at the Metropolitan Opera next March, having stepped in to replace an ailing colleague in ”Manon” there last year.
Meanwhile, Hadley is back at Lyric Opera this month to take the role of Fenton, one of his favorites, in the new Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production of
”Falstaff,” one of the few Verdi roles in a repertoire he has prudently confined to Italian bel canto, the French Romantic roles and, of course, Mozart.
Hadley remains refreshingly unspoiled by his success, evincing much the same down-to-earth honesty, caution, friendliness and practicality his classmates observed in him during his graduate years at the University of Illinois, where he says he was first bitten by the operatic bug.
”I didn`t expect the kind of acclaim I have achieved from doing things that come easily to me,” he confesses. ”That`s not to say that I didn`t work hard at singing my repertoire or that I`m minimizing how difficult it is to sing Mozart. But, relatively speaking, Mozart is as easy for me as breathing. ”During my seven years with the New York City Opera, I was asked many times to sing parts I felt were inappropriate for my voice, and I never found that saying no was a liability for me. When my career really began to take off at the end of those seven years, it wasn`t because I chose to sing `Il Trovatore` or `Tosca` or anything that heavy. It was because I continued to sing Mozart, Donizetti and Massenet-the music I like to sing and am good at.” That`s reassuring to hear in an age when young singers are under constant pressure to take on too many assignments in too many places, to sing too heavily in today`s oversized theaters, thus risking injury to their instruments, or, worse, premature vocal burnout.
”Why should I jeopardize everything that I have achieved? I don`t harbor the desire to prove I can sing those things at this point in my life.” He smiles. ”I don`t think I have started to tax the principal of my voice-I`m still singing on the interest.”
For Hadley, it`s been a circuitous route from a farm in Bureau County to the great opera houses of Europe and the United States.
He grew up in Manlius, a tiny farming town located about 125 miles southwest of Chicago. One of his earliest memories was sitting on the lap of his Italian great-grandfather, then in his late 80s, listening to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. He discovered his musical talent in high school, taking up the guitar. But it wasn`t until he went to Bradley University in Peoria as a choral-conducting major that he became interested in classical vocal music.
In his heart of hearts, he knew he wanted to become a singer. The first thing that turned him on to opera was a record of Italian opera arias sung by Luciano Pavarotti, who would later become something of a role model/mentor. The second thing was his audition as a member of the chorus in the opera department of Illinois University, where he did his graduate study. Instead of landing a bit part in the chorus of ”Magic Flute,” he got the lead tenor role.
A summer apprenticeship at the Lake George Opera Festival in 1976 gave him his first professional opera gig, Ferrando in ”Cosi Fan Tutte.” He married Cheryll Drake, a pianist, that same year. The Hadleys moved to Connecticut, where Jerry paid the rent, just barely, by giving private voice lessons part-time at the University of Connecticut and Mt. Holyoke College,
”hustling whatever else was needed to make ends meet,” as he describes his musical odd-jobbing. Beverly Sills happened to hear the young tenor sing the National Opera Institute auditions in Chicago and shortly afterwards offered him a contract at her New York City Opera.
”I spent my first season largely covering about 12 or 13 comprimario roles. I prayed to God that those people would not all get sick at the same time! As it turned out, I never had to go on to replace anybody. The second year, I got to sing Rodolpho in `Boheme` and Nadir in `The Pearl Fishers`-that was the beginning of my ascendancy at City Opera. After seven seasons, though, I realized it was time to move on. Emotionally, it wasn`t the easiest thing for me to say goodbye to the City Opera, because I felt I had grown up there in many ways. Beverly had been very good to me.”
But the opera houses of Vienna and Geneva had both asked Hadley to sing Tamino in new productions of ”Die Zauberflote,” and far be it for any ambitious young tenor to refuse either offer. He went on to score successes in both theaters, the big opera houses of America paid renewed attention-and Hadley`s star was launched.
The only real crisis in Hadley`s career thus far occurred in 1985, when he was forced to stop singing because of a condition known as TMJ syndrome-TMJ standing for temporomandibular joint, the jaw joint. Because of an injury to his upper dental arch at birth, Hadley developed a displacement of the disc at the right side of his jaw. Like a screw being turned ever tighter, over the years this increased the muscle tension in his neck and back, which caused allergies, stiffened his back and, most crucially, began to affect his singing.
”The worst was during rehearsals for `The Rake`s Progress` in Washington in 1984,” Hadley recalls. ”I was in pain the entire time. I did the whole dress rehearsal thinking I would never be on stage again. It was terrible.”
The tenor retired from singing for six months, a period of mingled depression and soul-searching for him. On the advice of his teacher, Tommy LoMonaco, he ended up in the New York office of Dr. Harold Gelb, an authority on TMJ syndrome, who fitted Hadley with an oral retainer that, within hours, had corrected the jaw displacement. His pain eased, his allergies vanished and his back straightened, adding a full inch to his height. Three weeks later, he was singing Des Grieux in ”Manon” with great success at the City Opera.
”Having to go through that terrible episode dispelled a lot of fear in my life,” the singer says. ”I`m far happier to do what I do on stage than I was before, more open to possibilities vis-a-vis my colleagues.”
Looking down the professional road, Hadley reports: ”There aren`t a lot of roles I lust after, but there are a lot I`m planning. I am singing Don Ottavio in Mozart`s `Don Giovanni` in Vienna and at the Met. Two years from now, I will add the Gounod Romeo to my repertoire. Four years down the road, it will be Debussy`s Pelleas. I`m getting the chance to repeat lots of roles I`ve only done once or twice, like Werther and Lenski in Tchaikovsky`s `Eugene Onegin.` And I want to do more recitals with my wife at the piano. Those I find most exciting of all.”
For a young performer, Hadley has a mature perspective. ”I take my work seriously but I don`t take myself seriously,” he says. ”I like to laugh. I love to tell jokes to make others laugh. Laughing at the absurdities that are rampant in this business has been a great boon for me. As a colleague once said, having caught me getting upset with a conductor, `Hey, this isn`t real life, this is opera.` ”
