At the same time protesting at Harvard had begun to take center stage, Gill found his way to the spotlight.

A heavy smoker for many years, Gill decided to quit in favor of private voice lessons, where he practiced furiously.

In May of 1967, Gill appeared as the Count in the Leverett House Opera's The Marriage of Figaro. The production--"the most charming I have ever been a part of," Gill beams--was organized by the student-directoral team of John Lithgow '67 and John C. Adams '69.

The Crimson review of Figaro was quite positive.

"Master Richard Gill, who plays the Count, would be well worth hearing by himself. His voice is as majestic as his hearing; he is at once dramatic and agile," the student reviewer wrote. "If his tone quality were only a little more variable, if he could sound sweet and smooth when necessary, he would be unassailable."

Spending a year on sabbatical in England, Gill sang regularly--away from the "fear of failure in front of my Harvard colleagues"--and was encouraged to perform professionally.

By 1971, he could not resist auditioning for the New York City Opera--just to see how good he was.

He was deemed extremely good--and eventually accepted a trial position as a basso with the Manhattan opera company in 1971.

The contract paid $75 a night, and Gill was guaranteed a grand total of two performances.

It was "risky" to say the least, but Gill says he and his wife agreed that they "had to just go for it."

Armed with a sizable advance on a large economics textbook Gill was commissioned to complete, the couple announced their departure to nonplussed Dean of the Faculty John T. Dunlop in the spring.

Their three sons were supportive of the career change, and their youngest transferred high schools when the Gills moved to Allendale, N.J.

"We were sort of oblivious to the real risks he took," says son Peter S. Gill '78, who was unfazed upon noticing that his sixth-grade anthology of short stories contained works by James Thurber, Ogden Nash and Richard Gill. "We always thought this was typical for him."

"If I failed, there was no way to return to Harvard," says Richard Gill, noting he would have opted to teach in "somewhere like Honolulu or Wyoming" if he bombed in New York. "Harvard is no place to come after you stub your toe violently."

Gill's toe did just fine.