Frangoulis Mario

Mario Frangoulis is a tenor of the 21st century, with the ability to sing everything from a hard-rock anthem to an operatic aria. "My greatest love is opera and classical music," Mario says, "I always sang, from an early age, with a record player - with Greek singers, of course, but also recordings of movie musicals, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand. I knew I had a good voice but I didn't know I had an operatic voice. In the beginning, I was against anyone saying I had that kind of operatic sound. I had always felt I didn't belong in that category. I wanted to communicate the music, and I didn't think opera singers sounded young enough, modern enough. Then I saw a performance of Carmen in Athens with Jose Carreras and Agnes Baltsa, and I realized I could be all of those things."
Frangoulis was born in Africa — in colonial Rhodesia, as it was becoming the nation of Zimbabwe — and survived a childhood marked by hardships. At the age of four, his mother found a home for him with her sister in Greece, at a time when the political situation in Africa was explosive and dangerous.