Feodor Chaliapin

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин, romanized: Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin, IPA: [ˈfʲɵdər ɨˈvanəvʲɪtɕ ʂɐˈlʲapʲɪn]; 13 February [O.S. 1 February] 1873 – 12 April 1938) was a Russian opera singer. Possessing a deep and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form. Chaliapin was born Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin on 1 February (O.S.) 1873 into a peasant family in Kazan, Russia, in the wing of Lisitsyn–Emelin house [tt] on 10 Rybnoryadskaya Street (now Pushkin Street). This wing no longer exists, but the house with the yard where the wing was situated is still there. The next day, Candlemas (The Meeting of Our Lord), he was baptized at Epiphany Cathedral (Bogoyavlenskaya) on Bolshaya Prolomnaya street (now Bauman Street). His godparents were his neighbors: the shoemaker Nikolay Tonkov and Ludmila Kharitonova, a 12-year-old girl. The dwelling was expensive for his father, Ivan Yakovlevich, who served as a clerk in the Zemskaya Uprava (Zemstvo District Council), and in 1878, the Chaliapin family moved to the village of Ametyevo (also Ometyevo, or the Ometyev settlements, now a settlement within Kazan) behind the area of Sukonnaya Sloboda, and settled in a small house. His vocal teacher was Dmitri Usatov. Chaliapin began his career in Tbilisi and at the Imperial Opera in Saint Petersburg in 1894. He was then invited to sing at the Mamontov Private Opera (1896–1899); he first appeared there as Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod's Faust, a role in which he achieved considerable success. "Le veau d'or" Mephisto in Gounod's Faust Monologue of Boris Godunov From Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov "Ej, ukhnem!" 1902 recording of "The Song of the Volga Boatmen" "Volga, Volga mat' rodnaya" Russian folksong later adapted as "The Carnival is Over" Problems playing these files? See media help. At the Mamontov, Chaliapin met Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was serving as an assistant conductor there and with whom he remained friends for life. Rachmaninoff taught him much about musicianship, including how to analyze a music score, and insisted that Chaliapin learn not only his own roles but also all the other roles in the operas in which he was scheduled to appear. With Rachmaninoff, he learned the title role of Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which became his signature character. Chaliapin returned the favor by showing Rachmaninoff how he built each of his interpretations around a culminating moment or "point". Regardless of where that point was or at which dynamic within that piece, the performer had to know how to approach it with absolute calculation and precision; otherwise, the whole construction of the piece could crumble and the piece could become disjointed. Rachmaninoff put this approach to considerable use when he became a full-time concert pianist after World War I. On the strength of his Mamontov appearances, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow engaged Chaliapin, and he appeared there regularly from 1899 until 1914. During the First World War, Chaliapin also appeared regularly at the Zimin Private Opera in Moscow. In addition, from 1901, Chaliapin began touring in the West, making a sensational debut at Italy's La Scala that year as the devil in a production of Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, under the baton of one of the 20th century's most dynamic opera conductors, Arturo Toscanini. At the end of his career, Toscanini observed that the Russian bass was the greatest operatic talent with whom he had ever worked. The singer's Metropolitan Opera debut in the 1907 season was disappointing due to the unprecedented frankness of his stage acting; but he returned to the Met in 1921 and sang there with immense success for eight seasons, New York's audiences having grown more broad-minded since 1907. In 1913, Chaliapin was introduced to London and Paris by the entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929), at which point he began giving well-received solo recitals in which he sang traditional Russian folk songs as well as more serious fare. Such folk songs included "Vdol po Piterskoy" (translated as "Along Peterskaya", which he recorded with a British-based Russian folk-instrument orchestra) and the song which he made famous throughout the world: "The Song of the Volga Boatmen". In 1925, when he performed in New York, his piano accompanist was a young Harry Lubin, later to become a composer of music for the television series The Outer Limits. Chaliapin toured Australia in 1926, giving a series of recitals which were highly acclaimed. Privately, Chaliapin's personal affairs were in a state of disarray as a consequence of the Russian Revolution of 1917. At first he was treated as a revered artist of the newly emerged Soviet Russia. However, the harsh realities of everyday life under the new regime, and the unstable climate which followed because of the ensuing Civil War, combined with, reportedly, the encroachment on some of his property by the Communist authorities, caused him to remain perpetually outside Russia after 1921. Chaliapin initially moved to Finland and later lived in France. Cosmopolitan Paris, with its significant Russian émigré population, became his base, and ultimately, the city of his death. He was renowned for his larger-than-life carousing during this period, but he never sacrificed his dedication to his art. Chaliapin's attachment to Paris did not prevent him from pursuing an international operatic and concert career in England, the United States, and further afield. In May 1931 he appeared in the Russian Season directed by Sir Thomas Beecham at London's Lyceum Theatre. His most famous part was the title role of Boris Godunov (excerpts of which he recorded 1929–31 and earlier). He is remembered also for his interpretations of Ivan the Terrible in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov and Salieri in Mozart and Salieri, Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust, Don Quixote in Massenet's Don Quichotte, and King Philip in Verdi's Don Carlos. Largely owing to his advocacy, Russian operas such as Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Glinka's Ivan Susanin, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride and Sadko, became well known in the West. Chaliapin made one sound film for the director G. W. Pabst, the 1933 Don Quixote. The film was made in three different versions – French, English, and German, as was sometimes the prevailing custom. Chaliapin starred in all three versions, each of which used the same script, sets, and costumes, but different supporting casts. The English and the French versions are the most often seen, and both were released in May 2006 on a DVD. Pabst's film was not a version of the Massenet opera but a dramatic adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel, with music and songs by Jacques Ibert. In 1932, Chaliapin published a memoir, Man and Mask: Forty Years in the Life of a Singer. While touring Japan in 1936 he was suffering from a toothache, and a hotel chef devised a way to cook a steak to be extra tender for him. This dish is known in Japan as a Chaliapin steak [ja] to this day. Chaliapin's last stage performance took place at the Monte Carlo Opera in 1937, as Boris Godunov. Chaliapin lived in Paris, at 22 Avenue d'Eylau, where he died of leukemia. Buried in Paris, Chaliapin rested in the Batignolles cemetery until 1984, when his remains were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. He owned a beautiful villa on the Sainte-Barbe hill in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, overlooking the Bay of Biscay. Chaliapin was married twice. He met his first wife, Italian ballerina Iola Tornaghi (1873–1965), in Nizhny Novgorod. They married in Russia in 1898 and had six children: Igor, Boris (1904–1979), Irina, Lidia, and twins Feodor Jr. (1905–1992) and Taniya. Igor died aged four. Feodor Jr. was a character actor featured in Western motion pictures including Moonstruck and The Name of the