Georges Liccioni

Liccioni studied voice in his native Marseille, with Pierre Mercadel, a former operetta baritone who was also the teacher of Charles Burles and Ginès Siréra. In 1957, after winning a first prize at the Voix d'or contest, he made his debut in Avignon as Vincent. A member of the troupe of the Marseille Opéra for three years, and a guest at various Belgian and French theaters for the next few seasons, he made an important debut in 1963: at the Capitole in Toulouse as des Grieux in Manon, the role that he would sing more often than any other in his career, more than 350 times.

The same year, he was hired by the Paris Opéra, whose member he would be until 1975 and where he would continue to appear until 1990 (debut: 13 September 1963 as Duca). He also sang at the Opéra-Comique, and various other French theaters, particularly in Marseille (where he had one of his greatest successes as Gennaro to Montserrat Caballé's Lucrezia Borgia in 1968).

His repertory was unusually wide, from Mylio or the already mentioned des Grieux to Sigurd, Dick Johnson (Opéra-Comique, 1969), Don Carlo or indeed Otello; and mostly not at different stages of his career, but actually at the same time! He sang also Alwa in the French premiere of Berg's Lulu (Marseille, 1965), Stravinsky's Oedipus rex; as Pierre Bezukhov in Prokofyev's Vojna i mir/War and peace, he appeared not only in Paris and Marseille, but also in Lyon and London. He was Calaf and, for a change, Puccini's des Grieux in Liège, Pinkerton in Geneva, Julien at the New York City Opera and in Boston, Don José on a tour across Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, Lenskij in Monte Carlo (1969). Already from 1980, he also taught voice, in Angers and in Bordeaux.

Reference 1, reference 2, reference 3, reference 4, reference 5: Kutsch & Riemens