The Young Finley

Of Orcadian extraction, Gerald Hunter Finley was born 30 January 1960 in Montreal, Canada, but in 1968 moved to Ottawa with his father who was an academic turned civil servant.

“I grew up during the Trudeau era, when it was a hotbed of artistic activity. There was music everywhere, and it runs deep into my family tree: I have one cousin who is a pianist, another who is a rock drummer, and a great-aunt who composed choral music and translated Italian opera.”

He began singing as a boy soprano in an Anglican Church choir under Brian Law, choir director of St Matthew’s Church in Ottawa.

Brian Law

“I adored it. Although I was an allrounder, quite good at sports and schoolwork, singing was the focus of my life, and when my voice broke rather late, at 16, I transferred almost immediately to the bass section.”

After his voice broke he joined the Ontario Youth Choir (”It was fantastic – the best way to meet girls”). He also sang with the Cantata Singers, the Ottawa Choral Society, and the National Arts Centre chorus.

He initially planned to train as a vet, intending to study science (he considered studying chemistry and physics) at the University of Western Ontario or the University of Toronto, and the decision to take up music professionally was a gradual one. “I turned a corner when I did work experience in Ottawa” which was “where all the experimental government research things went on”. He ended up weighing out dried lambs’ faeces for 10 days to check the zinc content. And thought, ‘I’m not sure this is where I want to be with my life.”

Gerry down on the farm near his Sussex home

photo: © Malcolm Crowthers 2000

From Canada to the UK

In 1978, encouraged by an uncle, Sir William McKie who had been organist and Director of Music at Westminster Abbey, he auditioned for David Wilcocks, former director of London’s Royal College of Music, and after completing a final year of music school at Ottawa University, he left for England.

He arrived in England in 1979 hoping to be accepted for a one-year singing course at the RCM (and the hope of training as a choral conductor) but discovered he was three weeks too early for the start of the term. David Willcocks suggested trying out for one of the Oxbridge choirs. The choir of King’s College, Cambridge were in need of a baritone and Gerry got the job.

He spent one year in London and three years in Cambridge, studying French, Italian, and Theology at King’s College and singing in the King’s College Choir. Christopher Purves and Mark Padmore were among his contemporaries.

“…three years so intense and exciting that they left me rather depressed, wondering whether anything could ever be as good as that again.”

King’s College Chapel

An early break was the chance to sing the bass solos in a St Matthew Passion alongside Janet Baker, who is one of Gerry’s most enthusiastic supporters, and it was largely due to her and Philip Ledger (King’s Director of Music) that Gerry undertook a year of post-graduate studies in choral music at the Royal College of Music.

Dame Janet Baker

However, he soon realized that “having sort of reached the ultimate in choral experience… I have to think about being a soloist.” Rather than be a “useful voice” in a choir.”As a choral singer, you get into some very bad habits-short cuts and tricks, things you do just to get through-and I really needed someone to unpick everything and take me back to scratch. That I didn’t get”

After the RCM, Gerry went on to the National Opera Studio “…I was up against people from the Guildhall like Peter Rose and Alastair Miles – they sounded so fresh and vibrant, so in control of their instruments that I just felt paralysed. All I could think was: how do those guys do it, and why can’t I?”

Early Appearances

Gerry’s operatic debut was in 1984 as Mozart’s Figaro for Downland Opera, appearing in 1985 as Guglielmo for Downland, and as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the 1986 opening of the Britten Theatre at the Royal College of Music.

But Glyndebourne has been pivotal to Gerry’s early career. In 1986 he joined the Glyndebourne Opera chorus, doing chorus work and understudy roles during the summer festival season, and singing roles he had previously understudied during the winter tour (Chorus 1986 &1987, GTO chorus 1986, 1988). In 1988 he took on bit parts, as a seller of sunglasses in Carmen or as Flora’s servant in La Traviata, he was Kuligin in Katya Kabanova, and also covered Guglielmo and Nick Shadow. That same year he returned to Canada to sing in the Festival Ottawa production of The Marriage of Figaro.

Gerry continued to study at the Britten-Pears School and London’s National Opera Studio with the support of the Friends of Covent Garden, The Countess of Munster Musical Trust, The Worshipful Company of Musicians and the Keith B. Poole Scholarship.   In 1988 Glyndebourne gave Gerry the John Christie Award, and he decided to use the money to go to New York and try Armen Boyajian “simply because he was the teacher of my favourite singer at the time, Samuel Ramey.”

“It was critical, because I was surviving on choral technique and didn’t really know how to sing at all.”

“If you have any doubts about the tuition you are receiving, then you should get out. I had received so much guidance from others and kept thinking that they must all be right, even though I didn’t feel that any of them were. If I hadn’t met Armen, that could have been the end of me.”

In 1989 Roger Norrington hired him as  Papageno for The Magic Flute, Finley’s first Papageno and his professional debut in German.

Glyndebourne new theatre in 1994

In 1990 he took part in the Glyndebourne tour in Peter Sellar’s controversial Flute.

And at the opening of Glyndebourne’s new opera house in 1994, Gerry was honoured to sing the name part in Le nozze di Figaro. In 1995 John Eliot Gardiner invited him to tour Europe in his Flute (recorded on DG Archiv) and it was in Amsterdam during that tour that he was spotted and offered his New York Met debut.

Operatic Performances

Glyndebourne: Gerald Finley has appeared at Glyndebourne many times since 1986, including appearances as Papageno, Figaro (Mozart and Rossini), Sid in Albert Herring, Graf Dominik (Arabella), the English Clerk (Death in Venice), Guglielmo (Cosi), Nick Shadow (Rake’s Progress), Olivier in Strauss’ Capriccio and Agamemnon in Iphigenie en Aulide. In 2001 he starred in the title role of a film version of Britten’s Owen Wingrave, a role he first sang at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1997. In 2010 Gerry will be Don Giovanni in a new production directed by Sam Mendes for Glyndebourne.

Royal Opera House, London: His debut with the Royal Opera in London was in 1989 as a Flemish Deputy in Don Carlo, and since then he has sung for the ROH both Figaro and the Count (Le nozze di Figaro), Achilla (Giulio Cesare), Pilgrim (The Pilgrim’s Progress), Creon (L’anima del filosofo), Gamekeeper (The Cunning Little Vixen), Don Giovanni, Giorgio Germont (Traviata), Yeletsky (Queen of Spades) and Golaud (Pelleas et Melisande). Gerry sang his first Russian Onegin to great acclaim in Spring 2008 for the Royal Opera and returned in 2009 for the UK premiere of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt in which he played the scene stealing role of Frank / Fritz (below)

In 2002 Gerry was  Jaufre Rudel in the UK premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de loin at the Barbican Hall, London.

In Autumn 2009 he made his debut there as Iago in a semi-staged production of Otello

For English National Opera he created the role of Harry Heegan in Turnage’s The Silver Tassie at for which he was nominated for the 2000 Oliver Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera and for which he won the 2000 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Singers. His first Eugene Onegin, in English for ENO in 2005, was a great success.

Gerry premiered the role of Oppenheimer, to great acclaim, in John Adams’  Doctor Atomic for English National opera, 2009 and returned to ENO in May 2009 as Balstrode in Peter Grimes.

Gerry has played Marcello for Welsh National Opera.

Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam: House debut as  Count Almaviva in 2001,   also Demetrius (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and   Oppenheimer in John Adams’ Doctor Atomic

Helsinki: Jaufre Rudel, in Kaija Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de loin

Salzburg: Salzburg debut in 2004 as Guglielmo (Salzburg Easter Festival) conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. His Salzburg Summer Festival debut was made in 2007 as Mozart’s Count which is being reprised for the 2009 festival

Aix-en-Provence: Demetrius (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

L’Opera de Paris: Mozart’s Figaro and Count Almaviva, Don Giovanni,   Olivier in Strauss’ Capriccio, Sharpless (Butterfly), Valentin in Gounod’s Faust. He also receieved much critical acclaim as Jaufre Rudel, in the French premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de loin, and as Athanaël in Thaïs, both at the Théâtre du Châtelet

Gerry has also sung Don Giovanni in Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Rome as part of the 2006 Mozart year

New York Metropolitan: Gerry’s Met debut was Papageno in 1998 (see photo) Since then he has appeared as Don Giovanni, and Marcello, a role he will be reprising in the Met’s 2009-2010 season. Gerry also premiered the role of Oppenheimer in John Adams’ Doctor Atomic at the Met in autumn 2008 and in the UK for English National Opera, 2009

For the Lyric Opera of Chicago: 1994 house debut as the Count in Capriccio followed by  Papageno and Oppenheimer (Doctor Atomic)

Los Angeles: Mozart’s Figaro, Belcore and the eponymous hero in the World premiere of Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr Fox

San Francisco Opera: Oppenheimer in the World premiere of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic

Santa Fe: Jaufre Rudel (L’Amour de loin, see photo)

Toronto: Mozart’s Figaro and Sid in Albert Herring

Vancouver: Mozart’s Figaro

Japan: Mozart’s Figaro

Photo below: Gerry as Figaro for the Canadian Opera Company,  Toronto, 1994

Concerts and recitals

Gerry constantly balances his career as an opera singer with activity as a concert soloist and recitalist.

His concert career has included

Bach: St Matthew Passion, St John Passion, Mass in h-Moll, Cantatas, Christmas Oratorio (recently released on CD)
Beethoven: 9th Symphony (on CD)
Blackford: Voices of Exile (on CD)
Brahms: German Requiem (on CD)
Britten: War Requiem (on CD)
Delius: Cynara very early in his career
Elgar: Dream of Gerontius
Foulds: A World Requiem (recently released on CD)
Handel: Messiah, Alexander’s Feast, Judas Maccabeus and Jephtha.
Haydn: The Seasons, The Creation (on CD)
Mozart: Requiem
Schubert:  in recital and on CD
Schumann:  in recital and on CD
Tippett:A Child of our Time
Turnage: Two World premieres, “When I Awoke” and “The Torn Fields”, the latter recently released on CD
Webern: Cantata No 2 (on CD)
Judith Weir: Original performance of Missa del Cid
Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony, (on CD)

Photo by Julius Drake: http://www.juliusdrake.com/

As a recitalist, he works regularly with Julius Drake, appearing in concert halls throughout the world and as a regular guest at the Wigmore Hall in London. Programmes include works by Barber (see his Barber Songs CD), Britten, Butterworth, Ives (two CDs “A Song for anything” and “Romanzo di Central Park”), Rorem, Turnage (The Torn Fields has recently been released on CD), Vaughan Williams, Duparc (see CD L’invitation du Voyage), Faure, Ravel, Mahler, Beethoven, Brahms, Loewe, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann (his CD Dichterliebe and other Heine settings has been recently released to great critical aclaim), Wolf, Tchaikovsky, Musorgsky, Sibelius. He also has a great line in songs from Broadway (Kern, Sondheim, Rodgers and Hart) and comic songs from the Music Hall (e.g. “The green eyed dragon with the 13 tails”, and Louis Emanuel’s “The Desert”).

Gerry and Julius Drake at the Wigmore Hall

Photo courtesy of  http://www.geraldine-curtis.me.uk/photoblog/

Recordings

He has featured in recordings of Beethoven, Berlioz, Blow, Brahms, Britten, Duparc, Duruflé, Gibbons, Handel, Haydn, Ives, Maxwell-Davis, Mozart, Purcell, Saariaho, Schumann, Stanford, Strauss and Vaughan-Williams, and has recorded a number of song discs in the Hyperion Schubert series with Graham Johnson.

He premiered a new work for Baritone and Large Ensemble, The Torn Fields, written by Mark Anthony Turnage and due for release as a CD in February 2008. His CD Songs of Travel won the 1998 Canadian Juno Award for best Classical Album, and his first disc of Charles Ives songs “A Song — For Anything” (Hyperion) was critically acclaimed.

Recently released are his recordings of Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Weinachtsoratorium, all with Nikolaus Harnoncourt for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. Also, Britten’s War Requiem with the LPO and Kurt Masur for Chandos, LSO Live’s Beethoven Ninth Symphony with Bernard Haitink, the premiere recording of Foulds’ A World Requiem, recorded live on Armistice Day 2007. His CD “Stanford: The Revenge; Songs of the Sea; Songs of the Fleet”, conducted by Richard Hickox and released by Chandos, was the winner of the Gramophone Awards 2006 “Editor’s Choice”.

Several of Gerry’s recently released CDs with Julius Drake for Hyperion have won wide critical acclaim: “Songs of Samuel Barber” was the Classic FM Gramophone Awards 2008 Solo Vocal category winner and his second CD of Ives’ songs “Romanzo di Central Park” was a second  Solo Vocal category nominee. His recently released Schumann CD “Dichterliebe and other Heine settings” was Editor’s Choice in the November 2008 issue of Gramophone, and was awarded 5 out of 5 stars by Classic FM Magazine, October 2008. He teamed up again with Julius for a fabulous recital at the Wigmore Hall of “Songs by Tchaikovsky, Musorgsky and Rorem“which was released as a CD on their Wigmore Hall Live label. The next CD from this partnership, Songs by Ravel due for release in June 2009, is eagerly awaited.

Gerry has appeared on several DVDs including the 1994 Le nozze de Figaro from Glyndebourne, the highly acclaimed film for the BBC of Owen Wingrave, and the world premiere production of Doctor Atomic. The first DVD released by the Royal Opera House / Opus Arte, Le nozze di Figaro featuring Gerry as Count Almaviva, was the DVD category winner in the Classic FM Gramophone Awards 2008.

A new way of singing

By 2005 Gerry felt that “…my recital work was starting to tire me. Emotionally, I was feeling drained: every day was an effort to warm up…” Then in 2006 Gerry suffered an oedema on his vocal cords.

Fortunately, he recovered quickly and with the help of vocal coach Gary Coward, Gerry started re-learning how to sing from first principles.

To read a fascinating insight into Gerry’s vocal crisis and his re-training read our interview from 5 February 2009

On a personal note

Gerry, who lives in the Sussex countryside with his second wife, has two teenage sons, Daniel and Stephen, both of whom are musical. Daniel made his Glyndebourne debut as the First Genie in Die Zauberflöte in 2005, a few days before Dad’s first Onegin.

Gerry now works with voice coach Gary Coward in London.

Gerry is a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music, and regularly contributes to Master Classes and Symposia around the world.

Gerry is also one of the artists involved with the Jean Meikle Music Trust, an organisation which seeks to encourage outstanding young voice and piano partnerships and funds the Song Duo Prize in the Wigmore International Song Competition.

Below: Gerry giving a Vocal Master Class to students at the School of Music, The University of British Columbia, 19 March 2007

What’s next?

“I’ve put Papageno and Guglielmo away now. Perhaps I’ll try Alfonso one day, for the fun of acting it…”

”I would love to do some of the heavier, more dramatic roles… maybe Hollander; even that scoundrel Scarpia.”

“I’m looking forward to Mandryka, I hope Boccanegra some time. Macbeth, maybe not. It wouldn’t be the high lyric repertoire. It’s the middle stuff: Falstaff rather than Ford. Not Rodrigo; I might try Philip. I am doing Iago in concert.”

Photographed at the Canadian High Commission in the UK by Benjamin Ealovega