Richard T. Gill, economist and opera singer

Richard T. Gill, Economist and Opera Singer, Dies at 82

"Mr. Gill, a longtime Harvard faculty member who wrote many widely used economics textbooks, did not undertake serious vocal training (which he began as an anti-smoking regimen) until he was nearly 40.
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"But after just a few years of study a world-class voice emerged, and Mr. Gill soon forsook chalk and tweed for flowing robes and very large headgear.
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"This was new and dazzling terrain for the author of “Economics and the Private Interest: An Introduction to Microeconomics.”
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"Mr. Gill quit his tenured job at Harvard. He became a fixture at City Opera, singing in a wide array of productions over the next few years.
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"In some respects, he later said, Mr. Gill found the roiling world of opera more appealingly straightforward than the roiling world of academe.
“Performing is a great reality test,” he told Newsweek in 1975. “There’s no tenure in it and the feedback is much less complicated than you get in academia."