Cehanovsky; Operatic Star for 60 Years

NEW YORK — George Cehanovsky, a noted baritone whose career with the Metropolitan Opera spanned 60 years, has died. Cehanovsky, who lived in Yorktown Heights, died Tuesday. Most sources put his age at 94, The New York Times said.

His career with the Met began with his 1926 debut and lasted through last season, when he worked as a Russian-diction coach.

Cehanovsky was born into an aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, and was a naval officer at the time of the Russian Revolution. He and his adoptive mother and voice teacher fled to Turkey. In 1922, Cehanovsky arrived in the United States and sang with the San Carlo opera company. He went to the Met in 1926 as a bit-part baritone at $60 a week. Among the parts he most often sang were Schaunard in “La Boheme” and Dancaire in “Carmen.”

In 1966, he retired when the Met’s old opera house on 39th Street was closed, singing his last performance--the quintet from “Carmen”--on the occasion of the gala farewell to the building.

By that time he had sung 1,706 performances with the company in New York, and another 677 on tour, for 40 consecutive seasons in 97 roles. Except for the last, all those figures still stand as house records.

Cehanovsky is survived by his second wife, Sylvia.