Jean Carbonell

Carbonell was a native of Aix-en-Provence, where he also died on 9 January 2016. His career was obviously limited to the larger provincial theaters; I find him in Bordeaux, Toulon, Verviers or Tours throughout the 1960s, but never at the Opéra or the Opéra-Comique, nor at La Monnaie. Roles he sang included Duca, Pinkerton, Grigorij and Cavaradossi.

Carbonell also sang a lot in Aix-en-Provence, and since singing alone didn't earn him a living, he ran a café there, two steps from the theater. That theater, though small, had a very good director in the 1960s in the person of Marcellin Truphème; without a sedentary troupe and hence with guests only, he managed to stage demanding works like Guillaume Tell or La Juive. The café where the guest artists inevitably gathered was of course Carbonell's. On evenings on which he sang himself, though, he served his guests a last coffee in the early afternoon, politely apologizing: "I must close now, it's time for me to go and sing Don José."

Reference 1, reference 2: Claude-Pascal Perna photo collection, reference 3, reference 4: Opéra de Tours archives