Buenaventura Belart
(1830-1862)

Born at Tarragona in Spain on 8 December 1830, Buenaventura Belart y Albiñana studied at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza in Pamplona and initially followed a career in law. He was, however, an aficionado of the fine arts and simultaneously developed his skills as an artist and as a singer. He appeared as a tenor in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Cadiz, Granada, Florence, Paris, Dublin and London, among other places. 

According to a report in the Liverpool Daily Post (13 June 1861), ‘Of the great tenor, Signor Belart, we hear accidentally from London that, in the metropolitan concerts of the season, he has surpassed himself, and taken a position truly worthy of his great gifts as the finest tenor from the highest class of Italian music — that represented by the chefs d’oeuvre of Rossini.’ 

He died, aged only 31, at Ivry-sur-Seine near Paris on 28 March 1862. 

A reviewer writing for Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (15 June 1862) thought that in a recent production of Rossini’s Semiramide: ‘we miss the graceful presence and elegant singing of Signor Belart, whose premature death has robbed the musical world of one of the best exponents of Rossini’s rich and melodious music.’