jerry hadley, suicide at 55

[alocispepraluger102]

Tenor Jerry Hadley dies at 55

Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Tenor Jerry Hadley, whose voice was heard at top opera ho...

(07-18) 11:17 PDT -- Tenor Jerry Hadley, whose light lyric voice and engaging stage personality enlivened his contributions to both operatic and crossover musical performances, died Wednesday at a hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 55.

Mr. Hadley had been in the hospital since July 10, when he was admitted after shooting himself with an air rifle at his home in Clinton Corners, N.Y., according to New York police. On Monday, he was removed from life support and given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

In a business marked by petty jealousy and back-stabbing, Mr. Hadley boasted a reputation as a kind, open-hearted and down-to-earth performer and colleague. Press reports said that in recent years, as his career declined, he suffered from depression and financial difficulties.

Mr. Hadley's career was a frustratingly inconsistent one, marked by lustrous, fluent singing and awkward missteps -- sometimes during the same performance.

At its best, as in a magnificent account of the title role in Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffmann" at the San Francisco Opera in 1996, his singing combined freshness of tone, emotional vividness and a gift for sumptuous phrasing.

Reviewing his 1988 Opera debut in the title role of Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress," former Chronicle Music Critic Robert Commanday praised his "smooth and mellifluous voice" and his dramatic alertness. Three years later, he gave a winsome performance as Tamino in Mozart's "Magic Flute."

But Mr. Hadley was also prone to oversinging, with results that could be strenuous and out of tune. In his last San Francisco Opera appearance, as Julien in the 1999 production of Gustave Charpentier's "Louise," he struggled to sing the role's high notes or to create a believable character onstage.

Perhaps the most distinctive quality of Mr. Hadley's career was the ease with which he alternated between traditional operatic repertoire and lighter or more popular fare. He made important contributions to prominent recordings of Jerome Kern's complete "Show Boat" and Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" and "Mass."

With his boyish good looks and appealing energy, he was a natural choice to sing the role of Shanty, the hero of Paul McCartney's autobiographical "Liverpool Oratorio" in 1991. And he was game for more outlandish projects as well, including such recordings as " Symphonic Music of the Rolling Stones, " a 1994 disc on which he sang an orchestral and choral arrangement of "Sympathy for the Devil."

In 1999, Mr. Hadley created the title role in John Harbison's opera "The Great Gatsby" at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. A 2002 revival marked his final appearance there.

Mr. Hadley was born June 16, 1952 in Princeton, Illinois, and grew up on the family farm there. His father's family had been farmers, but music was a central part of the legacy from his mother's Italian family.

"My grandmother played sort of honky-tonk piano, and we all sang," Mr. Hadley recalled in a 1988 interview with The Chronicle. "My mother and her brother had had a tap-dancing act that performed all over central Illinois; they were even approached by Kay Kaiser to appear on his College of Musical Knowledge, but my grandfather wouldn't allow it.

"My earliest operatic recollections are from my Italian great-grandfather, who survived into his 90s, when I was 11 or 12. He was a rabid opera fan, and he listened to the Texaco broadcasts from the Met every Saturday. We all sat around, and he would sing along with all the arias in his high-pitched elderly voice."

Mr. Hadley rediscovered opera as a student at the University of Illinois, beginning with a performance as Tamino for which he had auditioned on a whim. After appearing for several seasons with the New York City Opera, he made his European debut in Vienna in 1982, and sang frequently throughout Europe and the United States in the ensuing seasons.

His appearances with the San Francisco Symphony included two notable stints as the tenor soloist in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony -- once in 1992 when Davies Symphony Hall reopened after an extensive acoustic renovation, and again in 1995 during Michael Tilson Thomas's first program as music director.

He also sang the title role in Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust" as part of the Symphony's 1994 French Festival, and sang in performances of Mendelssohn's "Elijah" and Britten's "War Requiem."

E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/18/DDG