"Daniel Kamalic was born and raised in New York City, where he spent his summers riding his bike around Brighton Beach before pedaling home to his Brooklyn Jewish mother and his smooth talker father. He went out for Cub Scouts and soccer before realizing, during his time studying at MIT, that he loved sailing most of all. Now 48, he is a professional tenor with the opera, performing in and around New York."
"His life was shaped by the freedoms and opportunities that his father, Ivan Kamalic, risked everything for. In the 1960s, after Ivan's family fell out of favor with the communist regime in Yugoslavia, Ivan and a friend set sail on the Adriatic in a stolen boat with sails painted black they were not yet 20 years old. When the boat sank, they were picked up by an Italian freighter and brought to a refugee camp."
"Ivan eventually made it to the US, but he didn't talk much about his country of birth, which, after decades of oppression and war, declared independence as Croatia in 1991 and joined the EU in 2013. My father always just said he came here for french fries, blue jeans and rockn'roll, says Kamalic. Kamalic visited Croatia in 1998 and was thrilled to meet family members who were artistic like him. After Ivan died in 2011, those ties grew stronger."
Daniel Kamalic was born and raised in New York City and discovered a passion for sailing while studying at MIT before becoming a professional tenor performing in and around New York. His father, Ivan, fled communist Yugoslavia in the 1960s after the family fell out of favor, escaping on a stolen boat that sank; Ivan reached a refugee camp and eventually immigrated to the United States. Ivan rarely discussed his birthplace, which later became Croatia. Kamalic visited Croatia in 1998, deepened ties after Ivan's 2011 death, and pursued Croatian dual citizenship amid political and social anxiety in the U.S. by spring 2025.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]