Max Meili, a Swiss tenor, was born 11 December 1899 in Winterthur and died 17 March 1970 in Zürich, Switzerland.
He first trained as a painter then turned to singing, leading to lessons with Felix von Kraus.
Curiously, one of Meili's rare appearances in opera involved music at an extreme remove from his usual repertory; in May 1931 he participated in the premiere of Alois Hába's opera Die Mutter at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich, Germany.
He continued to record into the LP era, among other things appearing in the title role in the first post-World War II recording of Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo, taped by the Berlin Radio in the late 1940s and released by American Vox.
In 1955 he founded the Collegium Cantorum Turicense, which he directed in music of Monteverdi and Heinrich Schütz.