Veteran Cypriot baritone dies

VETERAN baritone John Modinos died on Tuesday at hospital in Greece due to heart failure. He was 84.

Born in Limassol, Modinos emigrated to the United States after WWII, where he completed a formal education in music. His career spanned four decades and included numerous operatic performances, including a total of 223 appearances in Verdi’s Rigolleto.

Modinos served as a professor at Bremen University, Germany and also taught in Zurich, Switzerland. He made his début in Greece, at the Athens festival, in the world premier of Nafsika – an opera written by Peggy Glanville, where he co-starred with Canadian soprano Tereza Stratas.

His funeral will take place at his birthplace Omodos today. President Demetris Christofias will be represented at the service by Education Minister Andreas Demetriou.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.