Carl Martin Öhman – Operatic Tenor

Born: Göteborg, Sept 4, 1887
Died:Stockholm, Dec 26, 1967
Swedish Tenor.

Carl Martin Öhman was born in Floda, Sweden in 1887 and began his musical studies in 1907 at the Stockholm Conservatory. He made his concerted debut in 1914 and his operatic debut in 1917 in Gothenburg and by 1919 was engaged at the Royal Stockholm Opera.

In 1924 he was at the Metropolitan in New York in company with and Schultzendorf, singing in the light of Ignorant roles, but also appearing in Samson and Janáček’s Jennifer.
After appearances at the Vienna Opera in 1925, he was engaged for Berlin, where he remained as part of the Ensemble until 1937.

He was back at Vienna in 1927 and appeared at Covent Garden in 1928 in The Master Singer and Tannhäuser.
From 1937 he appeared mainly in concerts and eventually settled in Stockholm as a vocal teacher. He was indeed very successful in this field, two of his pupils being Nicolae Geder and Marty Talvola.

He was one of those singers who was a star for the smaller companies, recording all the popular tenor arias for parlophone and ultrafone  during the mid and late 1920s.

Here he is in Wagner’s Meistersinger, one of his Covent Garden roles, in a recording made for Paraphone in 1926 and containing a great rarity, a Wagner trill. The Berlin Stensober Orchestra is conducted by none other than George Zell, who was later to lead the Cleveland Orchestra to international recognition and  accclaim.