By birth, his name was Peter Goretschan. His father was killed as a German soldier when Peter was still a
baby. His mother re-married, and Peter was adopted by his stepfather, Otto Infeld – the owner and co-founder of
the string producer Thomastik-Infeld.
Peter Infeld, at a very young age, studied voice, not least with Mario Del Monaco. At 21 years old, he entered the family enterprise and managed it, first
together with his stepfather, and after the latter's death with his mother Margaretha. In the 1970s, they introduced
perlon strings, and made Thomastik-Infeld a brand of global importance for professional musicians. After his mother's
death in 1994, Peter Infeld managed Thomastik-Infeld alone, and very successfully so.
Besides his business activities, he had various artistic leanings. He assembled an important and huge collection of
contemporary art; in order to make it accessible to the public, he set up two exhibition centers of his own, one in
Halbturn (Austria) and one on the island of Krk (Croatia). He sponsored lots of art and music project. He wrote (and
published) poems. And he continued to consider himself a tenor. A little surprising for a man with such skill and success
in business: it obviously didn't occur to him that his singing efforts were not quite on the same quality level as his
other activities...
Anyway, he was wealthy enough to produce several CDs of his own voice: he hired professional singers as his partners, a
chorus, a professional orchestra and conductor (of sorts, but still), one of the best recording locations of Vienna,
sound engineers, a booklet designer... beautiful CDs indeed, were it not for the singing of their protagonist. In his
defense, it must be said that he was 63 when the above recording was made.
Reference 1 and picture source, reference 2
