Obituary: Jerry Hadley

By Janet W. Butler

Jerry Hadley, internationally known operatic tenor, died July 18, 2007, at the age of 55, after being disconnected from life support following a suicide attempt. As Gary Panetta of the Peoria Journal-Star put it, the many demons that pursued Hadley of late—severe depression, a decline in his career, brushes with the law, personal problems—"proved too much for a gifted man who had too ready access to a gun."

In our house, this fall from grace into despair has a particularly poignant quality in that my husband graduated from Bradley University just a few years after Jerry Hadley made his early musical mark. As a dual music-business major, my husband got to hear a lot about the legendary tenor, and we followed his career like you’d follow your kids’ friends’ growing-up years. In a way, because we had this connection with Bradley, we had a connection with Jerry’s success as well. It was doubly sweet to see him succeed on the major stages of New York, and internationally, since he was an Illinois kid—like us—and if he could make it there, we all could…

And for awhile, Jerry Hadley did have it all. He had an unusual start for a farm kid from Manlius, Illinois; on one hand, he grew up like any other kid on a farm in the 50s—but on the other hand, his heavily Italian-American background meant he became familiar with a variety of music many kids never heard. Speaking Italian to the relatives from the old country, and learning opera at their knees, he was on track to study conducting until he enrolled in Italian class at Bradley…and all the music of childhood, all the dialects his relatives spoke, and all the memories took over, and he began to sing.

From that point, he hardly looked back.

In short order, Hadley went on to study further at University of Illinois, taught in Connecticut, and was hired by Beverly Sills when she was artistic director of the New York City Opera. A protégé of Joan Sutherland and her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, he became a singer/actor of a quality high enough that, when Leonard Bernstein wanted to record Candide, Jerry Hadley was the one he handpicked to sing the title role. That recording won a Grammy, the first of three Hadley would win.

Hadley himself was amazed at the degree to which success seemed to find him. As he put it, when he would "surrender and trust…things would just fall into [my] lap." Surrender and trust were easy when the young man’s voice was in top form and he was charming them on the international stage, something he did for a long time. They were equally at the fore when he’d come home to rural Illinois—which he did frequently—for benefit performances, to see his early teachers, to stay in touch with his roots. As recently as December of 2004, when Hadley gave a mid-year commencement address back at Bradley, he presented a picture of a humble artist, grateful for the opportunities he’d had…and ready to spread the credit around to all those who helped him along the way.

Listing the man’s credits is an impressive epitaph; listing his personal tributes from those who knew and loved him is even more so. Even those of us who "knew" him only indirectly have been touched by this life, by this music, and by sadness that it had to end this way. We who have been in the Bradley arts community especially feel the loss, Jerry. R.I.P.