When John Garris was murdered in Atlanta while on a nationwide tour with a New York Metropolitan Opera company, police frequently made oblique references to the sexual undercurrents that ran through the case like a subplot of a tragic opera.
The 36-year-old Garris, born Hans J.K. Gareis,was a refugee from Hitlerâ??s Germany when he came to the United States in 1941. The child of a Frankfurt opera performer, Garris was a musical prodigy, but spent the early part of his brief life as a conductor, recitalist, and accompanyist for Italian and German singers. Unlike most opera performers who train exclusively as singers, Garris demonstrated his innate talent by not taking his first professional lesson until after he was hired as a tenor for the Met in the early 1940s.
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