Tito Beltrán

Born Ernesto Eugenio Beltrán Aguilar, he was a successful professional singer of folk music as a child. He moved from Chile to Sweden in 1986 and studied voice in Göteborg. Beltrán started his operatic career in 1992 in Santiago de Chile (Duca) and Göteborg (Nemorino). In 1993, he was a finalist at the Singer of the World competition in Cardiff. Then he made a quite good career: Monte Carlo (1994), Covent Garden (1995 and 2002), Toulouse (1995 and 1997), Detroit, time and again in Santiago de Chile, San Francisco (1999), Genova, Torino, the Vienna Staatsoper (1997 to 2003), Royal Opera House Stockholm (2007).

It's fascinating somehow that in spite of being, as far as vocal training, exclusively a Swedish tenor, he had the worst imaginable Spanish quiver (or caprino). I heard him as Duca di Mantova, and it was a memorably unpleasant experience.

In Sweden, he was convicted for reckless endangerment in 2004 because of driving his car with his neighbor on the hood. That was harmless in comparison with what followed in 2008: one conviction for rape, and one for sexual abuse of a child; he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment. In 2009, he was indicted for threatening a fellow inmate, but eventually acquitted.

Upon release from jail, he returned to Chile, where he presented himself as the outraged victim, and continued to give concerts; he also served as a judge on a popular TV casting show.

Reference 1, reference 2: Kutsch & Riemens
Picture source