Ante Soljanich

In 2008, Ante Soljanich was listed in US records as living in San José, California, at 80 years old, so must have been born in 1928 (or eventually in late 1927). He came from Yugoslavia and was Croatian; in 1947, he emigrated to Australia, still spelling his name in the original Croatian way: Soljanić. He arrived down under abord the steamer Misr, and "the young Yugoslavian tenor", as newspapers labeled him, immediately started to appear in concerts, with considerable success (cf. The West Australian, 8 and 9 September 1947, about his first three concerts in Perth); he also made some recordings. Yet he didn't stay for long; in 1953, he was already with the Pacific Opera Company in California (cf. Let's dance. The national magazine of folk & square dancing, November 1953, p. 17), where he seems to have stayed for good. Upon arriving in America, he must have changed his name spelling to Soljanich, so as to give a clue how to pronounce it properly. He doesn't seem to have had a very long career; the last reference to him as a singer is from 1960; he was with the Peninsula Artists and Opera Company then (California again).