Jaume (Jaime, Giacomo) Aragall was born in Barcelona on June 6th 1939. His mellifluous lyric voice which was held in high esteem by other tenors, Pavarotti said "he was the best of us", Carreras, if he recorded more , we, the three tenors would be in the second division. Domingo always praised his top notes, always there, as clear as a bell. Aragall first sang at his local church choir and then was taught by Professor Jaime Puig and after a year by Professor Vladimir Badiali in Milan. Within six months he had won the prestigious "Voci Verdiane"competition at Busseto and in less than a year he made his debut at La Scala at just twenty three years of age, the youngest tenor ever to do so.
He had extraordinary musical intelligence and began singing bel canto such as the famous Romeo in Bellini's opera, Edgar in Lucia, Fernando in La Favorita. These were followed by Alfredo in Traviata and the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto. Slowly Jaume took on the heavier roles of Don Carlos and Cavaradossi in Tosca in all the major opera opera houses of the world and legendary performances at Verona and Orange.
There followed Esclarmonde with Joan Sutherland, Lucretia Borgia,Madama Butterfly,Un Ballo in Maschera, Werther and Faust. His French repertoire was sung in a typically French way, with great elegance, sinuous legati and without ever pushing the voice. He worked with all the leading sopranos and conductors of his day including Montserrat Caballe, Eva Marton, Ghena Dimitrova, Mirella Freni, Carlos Kleiber and Sir Georg Solti.
Aragall has an army of followers and today after many honours and awards has, in retirement set up the Concurs de Cant Aragall where he teaches students. Even in retirement he still gives concerts. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.