Julij Betetto

Julij Betetto, billed in German as Julius, was a Slovenian bass who studied singing in Ljubljana with Fran Gerbič and Matej Hubad, then moved to Vienna in 1907 for further study at the conservatory there. He made his stage debut in 1903 at the Ljubljana Opera House as Mícha in Smetana's Die verkaufte Braut, and was an ensemble member of the Vienna Court Opera from 1909 to 1922, giving well over a thousand performances there; he created Truffaldino in the premiere of the revised Ariadne auf Naxos in 1916 and the One-Armed Man in the premiere of Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1919. He sang at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1930 to 1932, then returned to Ljubljana, where he became the founding head of its Academy of Music.