Jonas Brunvoll Jr.
opera singer (1920-1982)

Jonas Brunvoll (3 August 1920 – 6 April 1982) was a Norwegian opera singer and actor.
Personal life
Brunvoll was born in Bærum; the son of Jonas Brunvoll and Kirsten Sørsdal, and was a brother of Gunnar Brunvoll.
During the Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany he was involved in civil resistance. He was first arrested in October 1941, and held at Bredtveit Prison for a short period. He was then arrested in January 1942 and held at Møllergata 19 until 4 March, when he was incarcerated at Grini until 20 March, and then transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. In the memoir book 3 fra Sachsenhausen fellow prisoner and newspaper editor Olav Larssen recalls cultural activities in the camp, and mentions that Brunvoll would sing in such a way that prisoners forgot their surroundings, both at Grini and Sachsenhausen. His parents were also sent to German concentration camps, his mother to Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and his father to Sachsenhausen.
Career
Brunvoll made his debut as opera singer in 1941 as Colline in La Boheme at Trøndelag Teater. His debut concert in 1949 was attended by the Prime Minister of Norway, Einar Gerhardsen (and his wife) and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Halvard Lange. Both Gerhardsen and Lange were fellow prisoners from Sachsenhausen.
“Jonas Brunvoll Jr.” enters the record as opera singer (1920-1982). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jonas, Brunvoll and opera can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Jonas Brunvoll Jr.” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jonas, Brunvoll and opera provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16009932. VIAF identifies the subject as 171486396. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1982, 1941 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jonas Brunvoll Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.