The Yugoslav-born tenor Anton Dermota (born 1910) first studied piano and composition in Ljubljana before beginning vocal studies with Marie Rado in Vienna. Following his début in Cluj in 1934, he was engaged by Bruno Walter for the Vienna State Opera two years later, singing the rôle of the First Armed Man in Die Zauberflöte. He sang Mozart's Requiem and Bruckner's Te Deum under Walter in November 1937 and made his first appearance at the Salzburg Festival as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni the following summer. A decade later he visited London with the Vienna Company, singing Ottavio, Ferrando in Così fan tutte and Narraboth in Salome. He sang Florestan at the reopening of the State Opera in the autumn of 1955. From 1966 he taught singing at the Vienna Academy of Music. Dermota was a greatly admired Mozartian, in the line of Tauber and Patzak. He also enjoyed a distinguished career in the concert hall as a Lieder and oratorio singer.
