 nicolai gedda (born 11 july 1925) is a swedish operatic tenor. having made some two hundred recordings, gedda is said to be the most widely recorded tenor in history. gedda's singing is best known for his beauty of tone, vocal control, and musical perception.warrack, john and ewan west (1996). "nicolai gedda." the concise oxford dictionary of opera. (3rd ed.), oxford university. ==biography== nicolai harry gustav gedda was born in stockholm to a swedish mother and a half-russian father. gedda was raised by his aunt olga gedda and his adoptive father mihail ustinov (a distant relative of peter ustinov), who sang bass in serge jaroff's don cossack choir and was cantor in a russian orthodox church.nicolai gedda homepage gedda grew up bilingual in swedish and russian. from 1929 to 1934 they lived in leipzig, germany, where young nicolai learned german. they returned to sweden after hitler came to power. in school he later learned english, french and latin. after leaving school he learned italian by himself. gedda began his professional career as a bank teller in a local bank in stockholm. one day he told a client that he was searching for a good singing teacher, and the client recommended carl martin Ãhman, a well known wagnerian tenor from the 1920s, who is also credited with discovering jussi bjÃ¶rling. later he also taught the finnish bass martti talvela. Ãhman was enthusiastic about gedda and took him as a pupil, at the beginning without payment, because gedda had to support his parents with his pay. after a few months he obtained a scholarship and was later able to pay for Ãhman's singing lessons. ==opera career== an early appraisal of gedda's singing was offered by walter legge, after first hearing gedda sing for the role of dmitry in a planned recording of boris godunov. "on my arrival at the airport i was asked by a swarm of journalists if i were not interested in hearing their excellent young swedish voices. naturally i was interested, but i did not expect either the front page stories that appeared next morning or the mass of letters and almost incessant telephone calls asking to be heard. i had to ask the director of the opera for a room for a couple of days to hear about 100 young aspirants. the first to sing to me (at 9.30 in the morning) was gedda who had i believe sung only once in public. he sang the carmen flower song so tenderly yet passionately that i was moved almost to tears. he delivered the difficult rising scale ending with a clear and brilliant b fl
1925_births Academics_of_the_Royal_Academy_of_Music Grammy_Award-winning_artists Honorary_Members_of_the_Royal_Academy_of_Music Litteris_et_Artibus_recipients Living_people Operatic_tenors Swedish_male_singers Swedish_opera_singers Swedish_people_of_Russian_descent