Ingvar Wixell

Ingvar Wixell (born May 7, 1931 in Luleå) is a Swedish baritone opera singer. Wixell made his debut 1955 as Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute. He worked at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm 1955-1967. He was engaged at the Deutsche Oper Berlin 1967 where he was a member for more than 30 years. Among other roles, he has sung Figaro in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen Amonasro in Verdi's Aïda, Baron Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, the title characters in Verdi's Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Verdi's Falstaff, as well as Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. In 1965, Wixell performed all the songs in the competition to select Sweden's Eurovision Song Contest entry. The winning song was "Annorstädes Vals" (Elsewhere Waltz), which Wixell went on to perform at the international final in Naples. In a break from the then prevailing tradition, the song was sung in English (as "Absent Friend"). This led to the introduction from 1966 onwards of a rule stipulating that each country's entry must be sung in one of the languages of that country. (This rule was cancelled for the years 1973 to 1977, reinstated in 1978, and cancelled again in 1999.) Mr Wixell ended his great career in 2003 by singing the Musicteacher in Richard Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos at Malmö Opera.