After briefly working as an engineer in Frankfurt, he made his debut in 1905 at the Lortzingtheater in Berlin. His
next few years were spent in provincial theaters like Poznań/Posen, Colmar and Weimar, but for most of his career, he
sang at various (smaller) theaters in Berlin – as a buffo (not always a tenor buffo: in 1911, he was a bass buffo of the
troupe of the Vereinigte Operetten-Theater der Berliner Vororte, i.e. the United Operetta Theaters of the Berlin Suburbs), more
and more specializing in operetta.
He made an enormous amount of records, most under his real name, but many also using a number of pseudonyms: Fred Carlo, Alfred
Senger, Carlos Cantieni, Max Steinert, Max Kuttnow, Carlo Arimondi.
Being Jewish, he could not continue a regular career under the Nazi regime, and spent his last active years with the
Jüdischer Kulturbund, the (compulsory) Cultural Federation of German Jews, whose few venues provided the only possibility
for Jewish artists to perform in the Reich (exclusively for Jewish spectators); Kuttner sang at the Kulturbund's small Berlin
theater.
In 1938 or 1939, Kuttner emigrated to Shanghai, where he gave another few concerts. He returned to Germany in 1947, and settled
in Bavaria, where he died a few years later.
Reference and picture source
Many thanks to Anton Bieber for the Fra Diavolo recording and label scan.
