The man who is never not a musician

When Clay Hilley heard Wagner for the first time, he had to pull the car over for a moment. And when he talks about it in the singer's dressing room, it still grips him: tam-tam, tam-tam, tarararatata! Suddenly he is a whole orchestra including the conductor: tam-tam! Tam-ta-taaa... One listens in awe, a small private performance, but above all: a fervent confession. For any imitators - the CD was a cross-section of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen, in the famous recording by Sir Georg Solti. And the tam-tam quoted? Siegfried's funeral march from Götterdämmerung. Hilley on his Wagner awakening at the time: "I just thought: What, what have I just experienced? I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. By the size, the fullness, the tension. And I thought: What must it have been like when this music was heard for the first time? What did the audience think? Simply crazy!"

And Clay Hilley was by no means a newcomer to music or opera at the time. As a teenager, he learned piano and trumpet, was in the school band, and since all his friends sang in the high school choir, he gave it a try. And lo and behold: a natural! "I'd never sung in polyphony before, but I really enjoyed it. And the more I sang in the choir, the more often my friends said: 'Hey man, are you actually taking singing lessons or something?" Which I hadn't done until then."
Then came the first solo performance: the captain in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore at high school. "I never sang at home - so my parents, who came to the performance, thought I was just moving my lips to a recording. Because I played the piano at home all the time, sure, but sang? No." The performance became a turning point: "That's when it started - that's when I started to really enjoy being on stage and singing."

But where does the talent come from that has paved the way so unwaveringly? "I don't come from a musical family. But the music ... yes, somehow I just had it in me. And there's a little story that my grandmother - even before I was born - prayed to have a musical grandchild. Maybe that's me. Maybe that's the case. Who knows?" Intermediate stages follow: studying music education (so that he has a "secure" profession), the choir of the university's own opera company, in which he gets to know Giacomo Puccini's La bohème. Then he studied singing and got off to a fast start. At 26, he sings "pretty big things", Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly and Don José in Carmen. "That's already difficult repertoire for many people that age. But I just got on with it."

At some point, he began to be approached about Wagner roles and, at the age of 31, he spontaneously stepped in as Siegmund in Die Walküre at a concert. "I sang my first Wagner from sheet music, almost from sight." At the same time, he found a teacher - Jon Frederic West - who took him under his wing and still coaches him today. A tenor, incidentally, who has also sung Tannhäuser, Otello, Tristan, Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos and Emperor in Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Vienna State Opera. "Jon said: 'Clay, you're very close. You're really close to mastering it all. I want to give you some advice. Because you can only learn this big, dangerous repertoire from someone who's done it themselves And he said: 'Just come. Live with me for a week. We'll work every day - as much or as little as you want. We eat together, we talk, you just live with us. In the old style: mentor and mentee, like an apprentice with a master." Since then, Clay Hilley has spent a week with West every year, learning new roles and reworking familiar ones.

And then? A stellar career that took him around the world. Bayreuth, Berlin, Munich, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, Hamburg, Baden-Baden, Edinburgh, Amsterdam... And roles such as Siegfried, Florestan, Bacchus, Emperor, Tambourmajor, Tristan, Calaf, Parsifal, Tannhäuser. He will make his debut in the Haus am Ring with the latter role (he made his pre-debut with Siegmund's "Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond" at the 2025/26 season presentation).

But who is this Tannhäuser for him? "Someone who is searching, who doesn't fit in anywhere, not in the world of Venus, but not with the others either. He never really arrives, he's always looking for something else. In a way, he's a bit like Siegfried - in the sense that authority doesn't mean much to him. And I'm going to bring a lot of my own Siegfried into this role, showing him young, a bit naive, almost childlike." He says and takes a sip from his 1-liter Stanley Cup, which contains a drink enriched with electrolytes to support his voice and protect it from the dust on (rehearsal) stages. Which leads to the final question: Is the music, the singing actually always present?

Is Clay Hilley a Pavarotti who invests all his time in perfecting himself? The tenor says: "I am a musician. I'm actually always a musician - even when I'm not in rehearsal. But I'm not actively involved in music in my free time. Because I rehearse and practise so intensively, with such concentration, that I sometimes have to clear my head and need space to think about something else. But still: not a musician - I never am."