ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 21, 1997 TAG: 9704210101
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Dogged determination took tenor Jerry Hadley from a farm in Illinois to the top of the opera world - and a plum gig with Paul McCartney. Hadley will perform Tuesday at Roanoke College.
Jerry Hadley still remembers the audition where they said he wasn't cut out for opera.
The internationally renowned tenor, who appears in a recital Tuesday night at Roanoke College, says he was a first-year graduate student in 1974 when he made a long car trip to try out for the opera-studio program of a major regional opera company (he won't embarrass the guilty by naming names).
"OK, it wasn't one of my best efforts as an auditioner, but I don't think it was as horrible as the reaction that this particular person warranted," said Hadley in a recent telephone interview from his Connecticut home.
"But I remember being devastated because the guy, after I had finished singing my aria, took me aside and said, 'Listen, I think that you really ought not to put all your eggs into this one basket. I don't think you have what it takes to make a career in the opera world.'''
Today, with the world's major opera companies begging him for dates, with dozens of hit recordings on major labels, with composers writing new operas especially for him, and after Beatle Paul McCartney chose him to create the main role in his "Liverpool Oratorio," Hadley can afford to chuckle at the memory. But he offers it as a clue to his success.
"I do believe that it was my doggedness perhaps more than any talent that allowed me to relatively quickly start singing full time. I don't want to be falsely modest and say I have no talent and it was just my doggedness that got me there, but a lot of my student friends and colleagues at the University of Illinois who were possessed of a lot more native ability than I was simply didn't quite have the fire in the belly that I had," Hadley said.
Speaking of colleagues at the University of Illinois, one who went on to make a good career was Jeffrey Sandborg, who now teaches music at Roanoke College and directs the Roanoke Valley Choral Society. Hadley recalls their days together fondly, referring to Sandborg and himself as "cohorts and partners in crime."
Hadley was raised on a farm in Illinois where his dad had 600 acres in soybeans and corn. "I can remember vividly when I was in my teens, sitting out on one of dad's old diesel tractors helping him in the field. It was an old John Deere diesel that had a very short smokestack and it belched back this awful black diesel smoke into your face if the wind was blowing the wrong way. I remember sitting out on that tractor trying to sing `Be My Love' as loud as I could and be heard over the diesel engine."
The opera gene may have come from his mother, who was the daughter of Italian immigrants who were opera fanatics. While listening to Elvis with his friends, he also absorbed the big-band music his parents loved and played old opera records. "On my great-grandfather's Victrola, I was hearing Caruso and Gigli and Ruffo and all of the great singers of the so-called golden age of Italian opera, and it got stuck back there in my mind someplace," Hadley said.
Among the many triumphs Hadley has scored since the day he was told he wasn't good enough to sing opera is the project that began the day in 1990 that he got a call from one of the Beatles.
"I was at home in Connecticut and I picked up the telephone and there was that voice, unmistakable, on the other end, saying, 'Hello, this is Paul McCartney.' I went, `how-ma how-ma how-ma howdy,' I was like Ralph Kramden in 'The Honeymooners,''' recalled Hadley.
McCartney wanted Hadley to sing the central role in his autobiographical venture into classical music, "The Liverpool Oratorio." The conductor, Andre Previn, had suggested Hadley for the role, which proved to be a worldwide triumph the following year.
McCartney encouraged him to sing the role exactly the way he felt it, refusing to dictate interpretations to him. "If a cultural icon can tell you whatever you do will be right because that's the way you respond to it, then that's a tremendously freeing experience.
``I just sent him a fax a couple of weeks ago when he got knighted. I congratulated him and I said, 'I just want to remind you that I was calling you sir back in 1991 before you got knighted, just remember that!'''
Jerry Hadley will be accompanied in his 8 p.m. recital Tuesday in Roanoke College's Olin Theater by his pianist wife Cheryll Drake Hadley. He is expected to give his audience a broad cross-section of music from his career, including operatic arias, light operetta, Broadway standards and American pop songs. General admission is $14, and $9 for students and seniors. He'll also give a free two-hour master class for singers this afternoon at 4 in the Olin Recital Hall. Interested singers should call 375-2333 for information.
Tenor Jerry Hadley in concert Tuesday evening at 8, Olin Theater, Roanoke College. $14, $9. 375-2333
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Jerry Hadley colorby CNB