José Todaro

Born Giuseppe Todaro on October 2nd, 1940 in Tripoli in the then Italian colony of Libya, he was raised in Sicily. As a teenager, he joined his elder brothers in Sainte-Marie-aux-Chênes, where they all worked as miners. Then he studied voice with Georges Genin at the Metz conservatory. In 1962, he started singing as a chorister in Mulhouse; after three years in the chorus and in small parts, he sang his first main role (Rodolfo) at La Monnaie in Brussels.

He was to make his career mostly in France and Belgium, not least in the wake of Luis Mariano, reviving several of Mariano's signature operettas, but at the same time also as a "real" operatic tenor. He appeared in Reims, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, Toulon, Avignon, Lille or Gent as well as at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, where he even premiered two operettas that Francis Lopez (Mariano's composer) wrote for him, both exceptional successes: Gipsy (1970) and Volga (1976). In 1980, Todaro made his debut at the Paris Opéra-Comique in a mixed Offenbach program; at the Opéra (both major Paris theaters were under the same management at the time), he was cast as Števa Burja, Alfredo, Italienischer Sänger, and in several comprimario parts like Beppe, Pong, Rodriguez in Massenet's Don Quichotte or Misail.

Later on, he sang a lot of (Mariano) operetta in Canada, and La belle de Cadix for its 50th anniversary at the Théâtre Mogador in Paris (1995). Further international appearances in Rio de Janeiro (1985, Tosca with Sylvia Sass), Edinburgh (Rodolfo, Werther), Glasgow, Liverpool or Lisbon.

Reference