Clay Hilley

American heldentenor Clay Hilley, who hails from Statham, Georgia, studied stage singing and music education at Georgia State University, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Opera Institute at Boston University. Winner of the Robert Lauch Award from the Richard Wagner Society of New York, he began his career performing with various American opera companies, including Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Arizona Opera, Chatauqua Opera, and Indianapolis Opera, as well as San Francisco Opera, where he appeared as Siegmund in Wagner’s Die Walküre in 2018. His international breakthrough came in the summer of 2022 when he stepped in at the Bayreuth Festival with only one day’s notice to sing Siegfried in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. He was immediately invited back and made his debut there in 2023 as Tristan. Since then, Clay Hilley has been a sought-after Wagnerian tenor on the world’s leading stages: he made his debut at the Vienna Staatsoper as Tannhäuser, sang Parsifal at the Bavarian Staatsoper, and has been a regular presence at Deutsche Oper Berlin — his home theater for several years, where he took part in Stefan Herheim’s staging of the Ring cycle. Hilley’s repertoire extends far beyond the “Master of Bayreuth.” In 2024, he appeared as the Emperor in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten with Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden, portrayed Bacchus in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, appeared as Laca in Janáček’s Jenůfa at the Hamburg Staatsoper, and took on the role of the Drum Major in Berg’s Wozzeck at London’s Royal Opera House. Hilley is a noted concert artist as well and has performed in such works as Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, and Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus. He has sung Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with conductors including Juraj Valčuha, Stéphane Denève, and Sir Antonio Pappano. In 2024, he received the prestigious Richard Tucker Music Foundation Award.

July 2025