Ramón Vargas
 Vargas (left) with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in Evgenij Onegin
The priest, who directed the children's choir in which little Vargas sang, convinced the boy to study voice. He made his debut in 1982 in
Monterrey, in Haydn's Lo speziale; the following year, he was hired by the Palacio de Bellas Artes in his native Mexico City. In 1986,
he moved to Vienna and became a member of the opera studio of the Staatsoper. He stayed for
two years, then he joined the theater of Lucerne, singing main roles. In 1990, he started taking additional lessons with Rodolfo Celletti in
Milano, and continued his career as a freelancer.
In 1992, he made his debut at the Met (where he would sing 223 performances through 2015), and returned to the Vienna Staatsoper, now as a
leading tenor (he would sing a lot at the Staatsoper through 2021). In 1993, he arrived at La Scala. From then on, he made a first-rate
international career: Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires; Covent Garden, London; Opéra, Paris; Teatro Real, Madrid; War Memorial Opera
House, San Francisco; Arena di Verona; Hamburg, Geneva, Liège, Toulouse, Monte Carlo, and many more places. At the time of writing
(2024), Vargas is still active on stage.
I heard Vargas often, and mostly found him to be an unsatisfactory singer with a pretty voice, from his early Almaviva to the Don Carlo of his
later years. But to tell the truth, I also heard him three times in excellent form: as Fenton and (much, much later) as Massenet's des Grieux
in Vienna, and as Lenskij at the Met.
Reference 1, reference 2 and picture source:
Vargas' website; picture copyright: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
I would like to thank Thomas Silverbörg for the recording. |