Pedro Lavirgen

Lavirgen was originally an elementary teacher, then he was accepted into the choir of the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, while studying voice (notably with Miguel Barrosa). In 1959, he made his debut as a soloist in Marina at the Teatro Fleta in Zaragoza; for the next few years, he appeared in zarzuela.

After winning a singing competition in Barcelona in 1964 and making a successful debut as Radames at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, he focused on opera, and embarked on an excellent international career. His artistic homebase was the Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, where he appeared regularly from 1966 to 1982. He also sang in Madrid; at the Colón in Buenos Aires; in Montreal, Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Cincinnati, Houston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Memphis, and for one single performance at the New York Met (Tosca, 1968); in Tokyo; at Covent Garden, the Edinburgh Festival, in Dublin, Gent, Toulouse, at the Vienna Staatsoper (46 performances from 1968 to 1980), the Bregenz Festival, in Prague, Budapest, Munich, Hamburg; and a whole lot in Italy: Rome, Naples, Genova, Torino, Arena di Verona, Como, Bologna, Palermo, Catania, Macerata Festival.

His repertory included Pollione, Edgardo, Jacopo Foscari, Macduff, Ernani, Duca, Manrico, Don Alvaro, Riccardo, Arrigo, Don Carlo, Otello, Don José, Turiddu, Canio, Luigi, Calaf, Maurizio or Andrea Chénier, plus several zarzuelas.

When he was to sing Manrico in Caracas in 1976, he and the performance's stage director, Michelangelo Veltri, and even Veltri's wife were kidnapped by the driver who should have delivered them at the theater; but soon, the kidnappers released them without doing them any harm.

Lavirgen retired in 1993 and became a voice teacher at the Real Conservatorio in Madrid.

Reference 1: Kutsch & Riemens; reference 2

I wish to thank Daniele Godor for the picture (Otello) and Roberto Falcone for the other picture.

I wish to thank Thomas Silverbörg for the Trovatore 2 recording and Danilo Serrano for the rest of the recordings.