Amador Famadas Famadas, a Catalan dramatic tenor, was born in Gerona on 1 November 1884. He studied singing first in his hometown, then in Barcelona, before going to Milan where he studied with Giuseppe Falno. He made his debut in 1909 as Radames at the Teatro de las Arenas in Barcelona. From there, Famadas sang all over Spain. Famadas toured later Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Germany. He also sang in the USA. During the 1910s, Famadas was particularly active in Madrid at the Teatro Real (1913, Samson et Dalila with Nina Frascani and Antonio Vidal; Aida with Cecilia Gagliardi, Riccardo Stracciari, Virginia Guerrini and Luigi Marinuzzi). In 1922 and 1923, he toured the USA with the San Carlo Opera Company. On 23 December 1924, Famadas took part in Tannhäuser at the San Carlo in Napoli with Iva Pacetti, Luigi Montesanto, Lucia Bonetti and Giulio Tomei. In early 1928, he toured the USA with the Giorgio Polacca's company that included Poli-Randaccio, Miura, Palet, Ordóñez and Lazzari. On 7 January 1926 at the Teatro Apollo in Madrid, Famadas sang in Aida with Olga Carrara, Blanca Serena, Víctor Damiani and Aíbal Vela. On 28 January 1928, Famadas sang in Karlsruhe in the opera Nerón y Acté by Juan Manén. It is known that Famadas was the possessor of a great voice both in quantity and quality. It is a mystery that he never recorded anything.
His 1928 performances in Karlruhe seem to have been his last international appearances. Already since 1925, he had performed much less frequently than before, and almost exclusively in Spain, where he continued his career, intermittently, until 1937. It seems that he was an alcoholic, at least in his later years; should his addiction have started earlier on, it may have hampered the last years of his career. Other than that, he was an avid Catalan Republican, which means: on the "wrong" (democratic) side in the Spanish Civil War; he was a personal friend of the writer and politician Carles Rehola, who was executed by the Franco regime in 1939. Famadas died in an almshouse in Barcelona on 2 February 1962. Reference and picture source: the fantastic website Interprets catalans historics |