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The esteemed Austrian tenor (and teacher), Kurt Equiluz, started his musical career as an alto soloist in the choir of Wiener Sängerknaben. Between 1944-1955 he studied in the Austrian State Academy for Music and Art in Vienna music theory, harp and singing, taught by Adolf Vogel. From 1945 he belonged to the famous Akademie-Kammerchor. In 1947-1948 he won the International Singing Competition in England and in 1949 the Vienna Mozart Competition.
In 1950 Kurt Equiluz was praised as a chorist, and in 1957 sang his first solo role in the Wiener Staatsoper as Pedrillo in Mozart’s opera Entführung aus dem Serail. Since then he performed successfully in Vienna the great tenor roles of the opera. In Wiener Staatsoper he appearded as Don Curzio in Le Nozze di Figaro (154 times), Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos (123 times), Balthasar Zorn in the Meistersinger, Spoletta in Tosca, as Kaiser Altoum in Puccini’s Turandot, Monostatos in Zauberflöte, as Rossillon in Lustigen Witwe, and Rossillon in Lustigen Witwe, and many other roles, a total of 69 different parts. He belonged to the ensembles of those houses until 1983, and he could be heard one more time in 1987 in Gluck’s 'Iphigenie in Aulis'. In the Salzburger Festspielen he sang in the premiere of the opera 'Penelope' of Liebermann (1954), Mystère de la Nativité by F. Martin (1960) and Das Bergwerk zu Falun by Rudolf Wagner-Régeny (1961), 1979-1983 the part of Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos by R. Strauss, and in concerts almost every year starting in 1954.
Kurt Equiluz is one of the leading Bach interpreters of the modern era, appearing with great success on the concert stages. He started to teach in 1964, and in 1971 was appointed as Professor in Musikhochschule of Graz, and in 1982 as Professor in Wiener Musikakademie. His beautiful voice and cultured and sylistic singing embodies tenor singing of the highest order, for which he won many prizes.
Kurt Equiluz has recorded operas for Decca (Fidelio, Zauberflöte, Ariadne auf Naxos, Rosenkavalier, Salome, Tannhäuser) and Telefunken/Teldec (L'Orfeo and II Ritorno d'Ulisse in patria by Monteverdi); in the area of oratorio and sacred music he recorded for Telefunken/Teldec (Evangelist in Matthäus (BWV 244) and Johannes-Passion (BWV 245) by J.S. Bach, B minor Mass (BWV 232), Bach Cantatas, Marienvesper by Monteverdi), and for Nixa (Matthäus-Passion), Electrola (Johannes-Passion), DGG (Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo by Cavalieri), Philips, Vanguard, BASF, Vox, Harmonia Mundi, Pan (Alfonso und Estrella by Schubert), Christophorus-Verlag (Winterreise by Schubert) and MMS. |
