Mario Chamlee - Later Years

Later Years

He recorded exclusively on 78 for Brunswick Records and was a successful recording artist in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. With a powerful yet beautiful sound, Chamlee's lyric tenor voice emerged as one of the world's finest tenors in the era which followed Caruso's death in 1921. Chamlee's abilities were underestimated, however, and although he was always well received by opera fans and critics alike across America and around the world, and his records sold well, he never achieved the same level of recognition of his talents and abilities that his Met predecessor Caruso did, and Chamlee has been largely overlooked and forgotten in time. Mario Chamlee retired from the opera stage at the age of 47. He subsequently devoted himself to teaching operatic voice to private students. His prize students included the Las Vegas stage singer Rouvaun, who later billed himself on an album cover as 'the world's greatest singer'. Chamlee died in his native Los Angeles in 1966.