Håkan Hagegård

Born in Karlstad, Hagegård studied at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm where he was a voice student of famous Swedish soprano Helga Görlin.

[3] He later pursued further vocal studies with Tito Gobbi in Rome, Gerald Moore in London, and Erik Werba in Vienna.

[2] He subsequently made his first appearance at the Drottningholm Theatre in 1970, as Pacuvio in Rossini's La Pietra del Paragone, at Glyndebourne in 1973 as the count in Richard Strauss's Capriccio,[1] returning many times to perform works by Strauss and Mozart,[5] and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1978–79 as Malatesta in Donizetti's Don Pasquale.

[1][6][7][8] He began his career associated with relatively light roles and expanded his repertore to include Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Count Almaviva in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Figaro in Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rodrigo in Verdi's Don Carlos, and Wolfram in Wagner's Tannhäuser.

Hagegård was appointed court vocalist to King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in 1985[2][10] and elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 1989.