Demetre Criona

Demetre Criona, also known as "Demetrio" and Dmitri Crionas (26 March 1891, Odesa, Kherson Guberniya, Russian Empire — September 1971, New York), was an American tenor vocalist of Russian-Greek origins, husband of soprano singer Anna Criona (1891—1973). He expatriated from Russia after the 1917 revolutions, staying in Greece before he settled in the United States in the early 1920s; Criona naturalized as a US citizen in 1928. Demetre performed with the Philadelphia Opera Company and toured extensively with the Ukrainian Art Theater in New York and Washington, DC, starring in Tchaikovsky's 1933 Mazeppa opera production and leading its Canadian premiere in 1945 at Toronto's Massey Hall. Criona was the second tenor in the Russian Imperial Singers quintet and performed in Theodore Zarkevich's Russian Master Singers with his wife.