Louis Quilico

Louis Quilico, CC (January 14, 1925 – July 15, 2000) was a Canadian opera singer. One of the leading dramatic baritones of his day, he was an ideal interpreter of the great Italian and French composers, especially Giuseppe Verdi. He was often referred to as "Mr Rigoletto" in reference to the Verdi opera. During his 45-year-long career he shared performing credits with opera's greatest stars. He spent 25 consecutive years at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. After his retirement from the stage in 1998 he continued to perform and record, most often with his second wife, pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, with whom he made four CDs. The couple also toured together extensively in concerts until Quilico's death in 2000 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Quilico received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts, in November 1999 for his lifetime contribution to classical music.

Louis Quilico was born in Montreal, Quebec, of an Italian father and a French-Canadian mother. He studied singing as a youth with Frank H. Rowe in his native Montreal while singing as a solo chorister in a church choir. After winning a prize in 1947, at the urging of the pianist and vocal coach Lina Pizzolongo (who was to become his first wife in 1949), he continued his studies in Italy, studying at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Teresa Pediconi and baritone Riccardo Stracciari. With the aid of a scholarship he also studied at Mannes College, New York, with Martial Singher (voice), Ralph Herbert (staging) and Emil Cooper (repertoire), and at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal where he worked with Singher.