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The Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda (born July 11, 1925) is a famous opera singer and recitalist....

The Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda (born July 11, 1925) is a famous opera singer and recitalist. Having made some two hundred recordings, Gedda is said to be the most widely recorded tenor in history. Gedda's singing is best known for his beauty of tone, vocal control, and musical perception. Nicolai Harry Gustav Gedda (gedda [written as 'gädda'] means 'pike' in Swedish) was born in Stockholm to a Swedish mother and a half-Russian father. Gedda was raised by his aunt Olga Gedda and his adopted father Michail Ustinoff (a distant relative of Peter Ustinov), who sang bass in a Cossack choir and was cantor in a Russian Orthodox church. Gedda grew up bilingual and learned English, German, Italian, and Latin besides Swedish and Russian. From 1929 to 1934 they lived in Leipzig where young Nicolai learned German. They returned to Sweden after Hitler came to power. Gedda began his professional career as a bank teller in a local bank in Stockholm. One day he told a client that he was searching for a good singing teacher and the client reccomended Carl Martin Öhman, a well known Wagnerian tenor from the 1920s who is also credited with discovering one of the world's famous tenor Jussi Björling.