Tibor Rudas Productions represents a collection of exclusive, licensed, original audio and video that are a small portion of the Tibor Rudas entertainment legacy.
Tibor Rudas is best known as the promoter of the Three Tenors concert series. Born in Budapest in 1920, at age eight, he performed as a soprano in the Budapest Opera. He also trained as an acrobat with his twin brother, Andras, and the two performed as the Rudas Twins until their careers were interrupted by World War II, when the brothers were imprisoned by the Nazi’s in Bergen Belsen.
After the war, Rudas, his first wife Anna (nick named Baba) and Andras toured Europe as a dance trio known as Sugar Baba and the Rudas Twins, performing in places like the London Palladium. While on tour they emigrated to Australia, where Rudas and Anna established a dance studio in Sydney and formed troupes of dancers known as the Rudas Acro Dancers. With Anna, Tibor Rudas choreographed French-style revues similar to the Zigfield Follies.
Starting with the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas in 1963, Rudas began producing variety shows, in which his dancers were joined by comedians and magicians. In 1967, he produced the first of three long-running shows for the Resorts Casino and Hotel on Paradise Island, Bahamas (since renamed the Atlantis Resort).
His bold vision, flamboyant personality, and mercurial temperament gained him respect and notoriety during Atlantic City’s renaissance. In a move that foreshadowed his later introduction of classical music to the masses, Rudas booked The New York Philharmonic as the first classical artists to perform in a casino.
In 1983, Rudas presented Luciano Pavarotti in concert for the first time. Because Pavarotti refused to perform in a casino, Rudas had a special tent built outside Resorts Casino in Atlantic City. The success of that event resulted in Rudas leaving his position at Resorts International to produce Mr. Pavarotti’s concerts worldwide. The two worked together for twenty years and produced over 200 concerts in such venues as Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, Wembley Arena, Tokyo’s Budokan, and Sydney Superdome.
His work with the Three Tenors, beginning in 1994 at Dodgers Stadium, cemented Rudas’ legacy as a promoter. He produced another world tour with the tenors in 1996-97, under the musical direction of Metropolitan Opera Artistic Director James Levine, with performances in Tokyo, London, Vienna, New York, Gothenburg, Munich, Duesseldorf, Melbourne, Modena, and Barcelona. In 1998, again for the World Cup, the tenors sang an outdoor concert at the Eiffel Tower for an audience of 150,000 and more than a billion television viewers. Rudas continued to produce the Three Tenors concerts until 2003.
Tibor Rudas died in 2014 of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 94.