Phil Stark

Stark, Phil

Phil (Philip) Stark. Tenor, actor, b Darmstadt, Germany, 30 Dec 1919, naturalized Canadian 1963, d Toronto, 14 Apr 1992. He trained as a violinist before studying voice at the Hochschule in Frankfurt. After engagements in various central European houses and with the Staatstheater in Wiesbaden and the Grand Théâtre municipal in Bordeaux he moved to British Columbia in 1958 and to Toronto in 1960. He sang with the COC and with its touring company 1960-5 and again regularly from1967 until his death. He also appeared with the Vancouver Opera, the Edmonton Opera, at the Stratford Festival, and on CBC radio and TV. He specialized in character roles, and in these sang in Europe and the USA with such sopranos as Birgit Nilsson (Pang to her Turandot, Herod to her Salome in Hartford, Conn) and Joan Sutherland (Baron Zeta to her Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow at the San Francisco Opera in 1981). He made his Metropolitan Opera debut 27 Oct 1973 as Herod opposite Grace Bumbry's Salome and subsequently sang Mime in Siegfried (1974) and Aegisthus in Elektra (1975).