Latvian tenor Sergei Larin, who starred at Milan’s La Scala and New York’s Metropolitan Opera during a three-decade career, has died at the age of 51, the Paris Opera announced.
Larin died on January 13 in Bratislava where he had been a permanent soloist at the Slovak National Theatre since 1992, said a statement released by the Paris Opera where Larin had also appeared in several productions.
Born on March 9 1956 in Daugavpils, Latvia, to parents of Russian origin, Larin trained at the Vilnius Conservatory in Lithuania and made his opera debut playing Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata in Vilnius.
In 1990, Larin sang one of his biggest roles, as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, at the Vienna Opera.
His international career then soared, bringing him to the Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Covent Garden in London, the Met and Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colon.
Between 1994 and 2002, the former French student also participated in a dozen productions at Paris’s Bastille Opera.
International musical channel Mezzo changed its programming to pay tribute to this ”exceptional tenor” by airing Bizet’s Carmen, recorded at Bastille in 2002, in which Larin plays the role of Don Jose. — AFP
