A tenor who studied voice and performed concerts while in a displaced persons camp following World War II, Stasys Baras was a Lithuanian-American opera star whose singing career took a back seat to a banking job as he raised his family in a new country.
Mr. Baras, 86, an Oak Brook resident since 1988, died Wednesday, July 12, in Hinsdale Hospital after suffering from various ailments including pneumonia and a heart attack, said his grandson Tadas Kisielius.
Mr. Baras starred in 44 operas staged by the Chicago-based Lithuanian Opera Company, said Vytautas Radzius, president of the group’s board. He also performed with symphonies here and overseas, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, before retiring as a singer in 1980, his grandson said.
“That kind of voice like he had, it doesn’t come very often, dramatic tenors like that come along very seldom,” said Julius Savrimas, a member of the Lithuanian Opera Company who sang the lighter, lyric tenor role against Mr. Baras’ heavier dramatic tenor.
Mr. Baras was active in the Chicago-area Lithuanian community. He chaired the U.S. election committee of Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus for the 1998 election, said his grandson Aleksas Kisielius. He also was a 30-year board member of the Lithuanian Foundation, which works to preserve Lithuanian culture. In 1998, Adamkus, a former Chicago-area resident, awarded Mr. Baras the nation’s Order of Gediminas.
Mr. Baras was born to an upper middle-class farm family in Lithuania, but the family lost everything as the country was occupied by the former Soviet Union and then the Nazis before again coming under Soviet domination. He wound up in a displaced persons camp near Augsburg, Germany, with his wife and young daughter. With other singers and musicians in the camp, he continued to study music and perform concerts throughout Germany while also touring England in the years after the war.
Those performances led to job offers with opera companies in Europe. But Mr. Baras chose to immigrate to the United States, arriving in the U.S. with his family in 1951 and taking a factory job in Gary, his grandson said. He studied singing in Italy on a grant in 1956 and performed regularly during the 1960s and ’70s, but continued to pursue a career path he felt would provide a steadier income, friends and family said.
“He loved his singing days, he loved to remember them. [But] he was a refugee, the most important thing when he came to the U.S. was to earn a living,” said Ale Razma, a longtime friend. “He was very realistic.”
Mr. Baras joined Standard Federal Savings and Loan in 1958 as an appraiser and worked there until 1986, becoming a senior vice president and member of the bank’s board. During this time, he lived in the then largely Lithuanian Marquette Park neighborhood before moving to Palos Park in 1980.
His grandchildren caught only the end of his opera career, but they remember him belting out the national anthem at Ravinia and ballgames, startling surrounding spectators with his soaring operatic voice. He was also the family clown at gatherings that included one week each summer fishing on a remote lake in Canada, Tadas Kisielius said.
Mr. Baras, who spoke seven languages according to his grandson, was full of Old World charm. “He would kiss a woman’s hand, and they would say `Oh my God, the way he kissed my hand,'” Razma said. “There was this elegant grace.”
Mr. Baras is survived by his wife, Elena; two daughters, Rita Kisielius and Daina Aukstuolis; three other grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.
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ttjensen@tribune.com
