Tom Krause
Finnish bass-baritone Tom Krause was born in Helsinki on 5 July 1934. His talent for singing allowed him to abandon his medical training to study singing with Rudolf Bautz, Sergio Nazor and Margot Skoda at the Vienna Music Academy.
His 1959 operatic debut as Escamillo in a Berlin performance of Carmen led to a quickly escalating reputation in Germany and Scandinavia. As a member of Hamburg State Opera he sang mainly roles from Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, and also began to appear as a guest in Amsterdam, Brussels and Munich. He first appeared at Bayreuth in 1962, at Glyndebourne in 1963, at New York Metropolitan Opera in 1967, and from 1968 began to appear regularly in Salzburg.
Contemporary roles included parts in the first performances of Ernst Krenek's Der Goldene Brock (1964) and Humphrey Searle's Hamlet (1968).
In addition to opera, Krause also sang German Lieder, plus songs by Mahler, Musorgsky and Sibelius, and his many recordings include a complete collection of Sibelius songs. Awards include the Order of the Finnish Lion - the highest award for cultural figures in Finland.
Tom Krause died on 6 December 2013, aged seventy-nine.