Hugues Cuénod

Hugues-Adhémar Cuénod (born 26 June 1902) is a Swiss tenor born in Corseaux-sur-Vevey.

Hugues Cuénod received his training at the Ribaupierre Institute in Lausanne, at the conservatories in Geneva and Basel, and also in Vienna. He started his career as a concert singer. In 1928, he made his stage debut in Ernst Krenek's "Jonny spielt auf" in Paris, and in 1929 he sang for the first time in the U.S. in Noël Coward's "Bitter Sweet". From 1930 to 1933 he was active in Geneva, and then in Paris from 1934 to 1937. During the 1937-1939 seasons, he made an extensive concert tour of North America. From 1940 to 1946 he taught at the Geneva Conservatory. In 1943 he resumed his operatic career singing in Johann Strauss II's "Die Fledermaus" in Geneva. He subsequently sang at Milan’s La Scala (1951), the Glyndebourne Festival (from 1954 on) and London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1954, 1956 and 1958).

Hugues Cuénod is a singer who has sung everything from Guillaume de Machaut to Igor Stravinsky. Among his finest roles were Basilio in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", the Astrologer in Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Golden Cockerel", and Sellem in Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress". In pre-war Vienna and Paris, he frequented aristocratic salons and worked with Nadia Boulanger, and after the war, the new early-music boom relied heavily on his light, unmannered, natural sound. An outstanding sight-reader, with a flair for the unusual, he made some pioneering LPs and left a recording heritage of the finest order, especially noted for his interpretation of French "mélodies" (he knew and worked with Honegger, Auric, Roussel, Poulenc and others), Bach, Elizabethan song, Couperin and Stravinsky again.

He holds the record as the oldest person to make a debut at the Metropolitan Opera, singing the Emperor Altoum from Puccini's "Turandot" in 1987, aged 85.

Cuénod resides with his life partner, Alfred Augustin (41 years his junior), in the Vaud region of Switzerland, in the Château de Lully, an 18th-century castle that belonged to his ancestors. In January 2007, at the age of 104, Cuénod and Augustin signed a civil union after the changes in Swiss law which gave same-sex couples many legal benefits of marriage. [cite news | url=http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/6704.html | title=The World's Oldest Living Tenor Celebrates His 105th Birthday (And He's a Newlywed, No Less!) | publisher="Playbill Arts" | author=Matthew Westphal | date=2007-06-27 | accessdate=2007-09-08]

Further reading

* "Hugues Cuenod With an Agile Voice: Conversations With François Hudry", Pendragon Press, 1999. ISBN 9781576470299
* Jérôme Spycket, "Un diable de musicien: Hugues Cuenod", Payot, 1979. ISBN 260100388X

References

* Nicolas Slonimsky et al., "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Classical Musicians", Schirmer Books, 1997. ISBN 0028712714
* Bradley S. Klapper, [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/25/international/i101845D75.DTL Tenor Cuenod, 105, Credits Small Voice] , "Associated Press", 25 June 2007. Retrieved on 14 February 2008.
* Will Crutchfield, [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE7DF1538F93BA35750C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print Cuenod, at 84, makes peace with Puccini] , "New York Times", 8 March 1987. Retrieved on 14 February 2008.