Feodor Chaliapin

For more information on Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin, visit Britannica.com.

Decades after his death, Fedor Chaliapin (1873 - 1938) is still considered Russia's greatest opera singer. The dynamism of Chaliapin's acting perfectly complemented his voice, which, being a bass, was best suited for the role of the "villain." In this Chaliapin, who for the most part was self-taught, created such memorable characters on stage as Mephistopheles, Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godonov, and Holofernes.

Fedor Ivanovich Chaliapin (also spelled Fyodor and Feodor - Shalyapin, Shaliapin, and Chaliapine) was born in Kazan in eastern European Russia on February 13, 1873. He was the son of a clerk, and as a young man was apprenticed to first a cobbler then a lathe turner. He also worked as a copyist, though he had very little formal education. Simultaneous to this Chaliapin sang in the church choir and served as an extra in various local theatrical performances. In 1890 Chaliapin made his professional debut when he joined the chorus of the opera company in Ufa. He also sang bit parts such as Stolnik in Moniuszko's Halka. In 1891 he joined a Ukrainian opera company and went on tour throughout Russia. The years 1892 and 1893 found the ubiquitous young man in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he studied with the opera singer D. A. Usatov. It was Usatov who introduced Chaliapin to the music of Modest Mussorgsky. During these years Chaliapin began to emerge from the shadows of the chorus. During the 1893 - 1894 season he first assayed the role of Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod's Faust.

Joins the Mariinsky Theatre

Chaliapin's first major career move came in 1895 when he joined the opera company of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Despite the good reviews he received by the St. Petersburg critics, Chaliapin was unsatisfied with his treatment by the company's management and in 1896 decided to accept the invitation of Savva Mamontov to sing with the Moscow Private Opera. It was here that Chaliapin came into his own as an artist. His first performances for the Private Opera took place at the All-Russian Trade, Industry, and Arts Fair held in Nizhny-Novgorod. This was actually provisional, summer work as Chaliapin was still under contract to the Mariinsky. At the fair Chaliapin met and fell in love with his first wife, the Italian ballet dancer Iola Tornaghi, publicly declaring his love to her during a performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, in which he sang the role of Prince Gremin. When the summer season ended Chaliapin returned to St. Petersburg but was soon persuaded to relocate to Moscow by Mamontov and Tornaghi, who had signed a contract to dance in Mamontov's company. Chaliapin and Tornaghi were married on July 27, 1898.

Perhaps the first great influence on Chaliapin's career was composer Sergei Rachmaninov, whom he met during this period. In Chaliapin: A Critical Biography by Victor Borovsky, Chaliapin is quoted as saying that Rachmaninov: "was a great artist, a magnificent musician and a pupil of Tchaikovsky: it was he who urged me to study Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. He taught me some of the basic principles of harmony. He tried, generally speaking, to give me a musical education." Operas by Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russians would eventually make up the heart of Chaliapin's repertoire.

Triumphs in Moscow and Abroad

From 1896 to 1898 Chaliapin cemented his artistic reputation with the Moscow Private Opera. He sang such great roles as Varlaam in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Ivan the Terrible in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov, and Holofernes in Valentin Serov's Judith. This latter was the role he was rehearsing for the Mariinsky when he decided to leave that company. In 1898 Chaliapin made a triumphant return to St. Petersburg with the Moscow Private Opera. It was during this tour that the critic Vladimir Stasov took notice of Chaliapin; over the years Stasov would prove to be one of Chaliapin's most ardent champions.

In 1914 an English admirer published this assessment in a newspaper (quoted by Borovsky): "[Chaliapin] differs from most of his colleagues in insisting that the actor's first duty is personation. He is not content to show himself in the limelight in easy contempt of the part which he pretends to be playing. He knows that the material of an actor's art is himself, his voice and his gesture, and he handles this material with a courage and variety which place him high above his fellows." In 1927, near the end of Chaliapin's career, the newspaper Wiener Zeitung (also quoted by Borovsky) declared: "It is almost impossible to separate Chaliapin the singer from Chaliapin the actor. Each works for the other. Where the singer ends, the actor begins and vice-versa. They are usually both on stage at the same time.…" These assessments show not only that Chaliapin took all aspects of his art seriously, but that he was staunchly in the modern camp of Konstantin Stanislavsky, cofounder of the Moscow Art Theatre and developer of the acting technique known as "the method." Stanislavsky praised Chaliapin for his ability to synthesize his talents into a character's persona. This was evident back in 1898 when Chaliapin took on the title role in the Rimsky-Korsakov version of Boris Godunov.

By 1899 Chaliapin was viewed practically as a national treasure, and he signed contracts to sing at both the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. He would soon become an international figure, as well known as the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. In 1901 he made his debut at Teatro La Scala in Milan in the title role of Arrigo Boito's Mefistofole. Rachmaninov assisted him in preparing for the role. This was the first of many tours in Europe and the United States. In France Chaliapin was especially beloved and did much to promote Russian culture in that country in the early part of the twentieth century.

Friendship with Gorky

1901 was another fateful year for Chaliapin; not only did it mark his first tour abroad, but also the beginning of his friendship with the writer Maxim Gorky (originally Alexei Maximovich Peshkov). It was Gorky who "wrote" Chaliapin's autobiography (published in English as Chaliapin, an Autobiography as told to Maxim Gorky, translated by Nina Froud). The idea for the "autobiography" was actually Gorky's; he convinced Chaliapin to come to Capri (where he was staying) to relate his life story. While Gorky certainly introduced Chaliapin to radical political thought, the latter was never a revolutionary in the sense Gorky was. Nevertheless Chaliapin performed for workers and sang revolutionary songs. After the Russian Revolution of October 1918 Chaliapin had at best lukewarm support for the Soviet Union. Yet he admired Gorky and though he thought his friend "quixotic" never wavered in his support.

The first fifteen years of the twentieth century was the apex of Chaliapin's career. During these years he created many memorable roles including the title characters in Anton Rubinstein's The Demon, Rachmaninov's Aleko, Jules Massenet's Don Quixote (considered his last great role), and the aforementioned Mefistofele. Chaliapin's other roles during this period included King Philip II in Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos, Tonio in Ruggierio Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, Salieri in Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, and Dosifei in Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina. One composer whom Chaliapin did not sing was Richard Wagner. Although he made polite excuses for his decision throughout his career, these have been deemed weak and disingenuous by Chaliapin's biographers. Nevertheless, this period marked one triumph after another for Chaliapin, both at home and abroad. On January 6, 1911, Tsar Nicholas II conferred on Chaliapin - who was no supporter of the Romanov dynasty - the title of "Soloist to His Majesty," the highest honor for a singer in tsarist Russia. Following his successful La Scala performance Chaliapin made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1907 and at the Paris Opera in 1908. His return to the Metropolitan Opera in 1921 in the role of Boris Godunov was so successful that it sparked an eight-year run there. He made his debut at London's Covent Garden in 1926.

An Expatriate in France

Following the 1918 Bolshevik takeover, Chaliapin became the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre and in 1919 became a member of its managing board. However, despite being named a People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1918, Chaliapin grew more disenchanted with the way the country was being run, particularly the restrictions on artistic freedom that were creeping in. Following a 1921 tour that took him to the United Kingdom and the United States, in which his family was not allowed to join him, Chaliapin made up his mind to leave the Soviet Union. He left for good on June 29, 1922. Soviet authorities tried many times to entice him to return but to no avail. In 1927 he was stripped of his title of People's Artist of the Soviet Union. In the early 1930s Gorky, who too had gone abroad partly out of disillusionment but returned to the Soviet Union, tried to convince Chaliapin to return also. In 1936 Stalin himself, through an intermediary (Chaliapin's American manager, Sol Hurok) made a plea for Chaliapin's return. He eventually settled in Paris.

By this time Chaliapin had divorced Iola Tornaghi and married Maria Valentinovna Petzold, with whom he had several children. His effort to support two households was another incentive for remaining abroad and especially to return to the Metropolitan Opera. Yet Chaliapin's years in exile were not without personal anguish for a man so strongly identified with Russia.

Chaliapin was also an outstanding chamber singer and gave many concert performances both in Russia and abroad. Before his break with the Soviet Union he gave numerous concerts in Russia for workers; in Europe he sang in benefits to raise money for starving Russians during the Civil War. From the beginning of his career Chaliapin made recordings; in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries these were wax cylanders. His first recording abroad was in Milan in 1907 and again in 1912. He also recorded in New York, Paris, and London. In 1926 the live performance of Boito's Mefistofele, with Chaliapin in the title role, was recorded at Covent Garden. And in 1927 a recording was made of the concert performance of Mozart and Salieri at London's Royal Albert Hall. Chaliapin's final recordings were made in 1936 in Tokyo. Chaliapin also tried his hand at directing opera: Khovanshchina and Don Quixote. In addition to his singing and acting Chaliapin was a man whose creative outlets were exhibited in painting, drawing, and sculpture. Besides the "autobiography," Chaliapin wrote Pages from My Life and Man and Mask (the proper translation for the latter work is Mask and Soul). Chaliapin also appeared in the title role in the 1933 film Don Quixote, directed by G.W. Pabst.

Chaliapin died of leukemia in Paris on April 12, 1938. His old friend, advisor, and fellow expatriate Sergei Rachmaninov had visited Chaliapin two days before his death but could not bear to attend the funeral. The enormous cortège passed by the Paris Opera House before arriving at the Batignolles Cemetery, where Chaliapin was buried. His body remained there until 1984 when he was disinterred and reburied in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery.

Books

Borovsky, Victor, Chaliapin: A Critical Biography, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.

Great Soviet Encyclopedia, trans. of Third Ed., Vol. 29, Macmillan, 1982.

Online

Borovsky, Victor, "Feodor Chaliapin," Nimbus Records, Prima Voce, http://www.wyastone.co.uk/nrl/pvoce/7823c.html (December 27, 2003).

"Feodor Chaliapin (1873 - 1938)," http://www.russia-in-us.com/Music/Opera/Chaliapin/ (December 27, 2003).

"Feodor Ivanovich Shaliapin (1873 - 1938)," http://www.planet.satto.co.yu/slavbasses/english/sal1a.htm (December 27, 2003).

Feodor Chaliapin

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин, Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin; February 13 [O.S. February 1] 1873–April 12, 1938) (not to be confused with his son, Feodor Chaliapin, Jr., 6 Oct 1905-17 September 1992) was the most famous Russian opera singer of the 20th century. The possesor of a large and expressive bass voice, he is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.

During the first phase of his career, Chaliapin endured strong competition from three other great basses, namely, the rich-voiced Lev Sibiriakov (1869-1942), the more lyrical Vladimir Kastorsky (1871-1948), and Dmitri Buchtoyarov (1866-1918), whose voice lay between the extremes exemplified by Sibiriakov and Kastorsky. The fact that Chaliapin is far and away the best remembered of this magnificent quartet of rival basses testifies to the magnetic power of his personality, the acuteness of his musical interpretations and the vividness of his performances.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Later life 4 Autobiographical works 5 Recordings 6 Quotations 7 References 8 External links

Early life

The belltower of Epiphany (Bogoyavlenskaya) Church in Kazan. The Chaliapin Chamber Hall is located on the second floor of the belltower.^[1]

Feodor Chaliapin was born into a peasant family on February 1 (OS) 1873 in Kazan, in the wing of merchant Lisitzin's house on Rybnoryadskaya Street (now Pushkin Street) 10. 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 in Epiphany (Bogoyavlenskaya) Church on Bolshaya Prolomnaya street (now Bauman Street). His godparents were the neighbors: the shoemaker Nikolay Tonkov and 12-year-old girl Ludmilochka Kharitonova. The dwelling was expensive for his father, Ivan Yakovlevich, who served as a clerk in the Zemskaya Uprava (Land Council), and in 1878 the Chaliapin family moved to the village Ametyevo (also Ometyevo, or the Ometyev settlements, now a settlement within Kazan) behind the area of Sukonnaya Sloboda, and settled in a small house.

Career

Feodor Chaliapin

Largely self-taught, he began his career at Tbilisi and the Imperial Opera, St. Petersburg in 1894. He was then invited to sing at the Mamontov Private Opera (1896-1899); his first role there was as Mephistopholes in Faust, in which he was a considerable success. At Mamontov he also 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 slated to appear. With Rachmaninoff he learned the role of Boris Godunov, which became his signature character.^[2] 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.^[3]

After Mamontov, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow engaged Chaliapin, where he appeared regularly from 1899 until 1914. During the First World War, Chaliapin also appeared regularly at the Zimin Private Opera in the Russian capital. In addition, from 1901, Chaliapin began appearing the West, making a sensational debut at La Scala that year as the devil in a production of Boito's Mefistofele, under the baton of the 20th century's most dynamic opera conductor, 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, the New York audiences having grown more broad-minded in the meantime. In 1913, Chaliapin was introduced to London and Paris by the brilliant entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev, at which point he began giving well-received solo recitals in which he sang traditional Russian folk songs as well as more serious fare. Among these songs are Along Peterskaya, which he recorded with a British-based Russian folk-instruments' orchestra, and the song which he made famous throughout the world: The Song of the Volga Boatmen.

Later life

Portrait by Boris Kustodiev.

In 1926, Chaliapin toured Australia to much acclaim.

In his private life, Chaliapin's personal arrangements were disrupted in 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 became manifest during the ensuing Civil War, combined with, reportedly, the encroachment on some of his property by the Communist authorities, ^[4] caused him to remain perpetually outside Russia after 1921. He still maintained, however, that he was not anti-Soviet. 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, America and further afield. 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 impersonations of Ivan the Terrible in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Maid of Pskov, Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust, Jules Massenet's Don Quichotte, King Philip in Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos and Bertram in Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable.

Largely owing to his advocacy, Russian operas such as Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Gudonuv and Khovanshchina, Mikhail Glinka's Ivan Susanin, Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride became well known in the West.

Chaliapin made one sound film for the director G.W. Pabst, the 1933 Adventures of Don Quixote. Rather than going out in one version with subtitles, 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 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. Chaliapin's last stage performance took place at the Monte Carlo Opera in 1937, as Boris. He died the following year of leukemia, aged 65, in Paris, where he was interred. In 1984, his remains were transferred from Paris to Moscow with elaborate ceremony. They were re-buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

One of his sons, Feodor Chaliapin, Jr. (1905-1992), had a notable career in Western motion pictures as a character actor. Another son, Boris Chaliapin, was a well-known artist, having painted the portraits used on 414 covers of the mass-circulation news magazine Time between 1942 and 1970.^[5]

Autobiographical works

Grave of Chaliapin in Novodevichy Cemetery

Chaliapin's autobiographical collaboration with Maxim Gorky occurred in 1917. He had already begun writing his autobiography long before, in the Crimea. In 1917, while he was in the south of France, he was urged to write such a work by a French journalist who hoped to ghost-write it. Gorky, who was his intimate friend and was then living in Capri, persuaded Chaliapin to stay with him there and with the help of a secretary a great deal of information was taken down which Gorky fashioned into a long manuscript, published in Russia in 1917 as a series of articles in the journal Letopis. Meanwhile Chaliapin attempted to sell it to an American publisher, who refused it on learning that it had been published in Russian. There was a rift with Gorky, and Chaliapin worked with another editor to produce a 'new' version of his original text. This was published in America as Pages of My Life (Harper and Brothers, New York 1927), took the story only up to 1905, and lacked the depth, style and life of Gorky's version. Then in 1932 Chaliapin published Man and Mask (Alfred A. Knopf, New York) to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of his first stage appearance. The original manuscript of the Gorky version was first translated and published in English in 1967, by Nina Froud and James Hanley, as Chaliapin: An autobiography as told to Maxim Gorky (Stein and Day, New York), and included an appendix of original correspondence including a section relating to Gorky.^[6]

Recordings

Chaliapin possessed a high-lying bass voice with an unmistakable timbre which recorded well. He cut a prolific number of discs for His Master's Voice, beginning in Russia with acoustical recordings made at the dawn of the 20th Century, and continuing through the early electrical (microphone) era. Some of his performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London were recorded live in the 1920s, including a haunting version of the "Death of Boris" from Boris Godunov. His last disc, made in Tokyo in 1936, was of the famous The Song of the Volga Boatmen. Many of his recordings were issued in the United States by RCA Victor. His legacy of recordings is available on CDs issued by EMI, Preiser, Naxos and other commercial labels.

Quotations

• "...in Russian Art Shalyapin is an epoch like Pushkin." (Maxim Gorky)
• Michael Scott remarked, "Chaliapin ranks with Caruso and Maria Callas as one of the three greatest singers and most potent and influential artists of the twentieth century."^[7]
• " ... unrivalled as a singing actor in his age or any subsequent one." (Rosa Ponselle)
• "At the Met he sang the role of Basilio in Rossini's The Barber of Seville as a vulgar, unctious, greasy priest, constantly picking his nose and wiping his fingers onto his cassock. Audiences were appalled. Defending himself, Chaliapin said in an interview that Basilio 'is a Spanish priest. It is a type I know well. He is not the modern American priest, clean and well-groomed; he is dirty and unkempt, he is a beast, and this is what I make him, a comic beast.' " (Harold C. Schonberg)^[8]
• Some accused Chaliapin of brawling backstage. Rachmaninoff agreed. "Feodor is a brawler. They are all scared of his very spirit. He shouts suddenly or even hits someone! And Feodor's fist is powerful ... He can take care of himself. And how else should one behave? Backstage at our own theater it's just like a saloon. They shout, they drink, they swear in the foulest language."^[2]
• Geraldine Farrar said Chaliapin had a voice like "melodious thunder" but warned of his unannounced antics to hog the limelight onstage. "Chaliapin was a wonderful opera partner, but one had to be watchful for sudden departures from the rehearsal plan, and the touches of originality favorable only for the aggrandizement of Chaliapin."^[9]
• Rosa Ponselle was equally vocal about his scene-stealing: "If a colleague gave him an inch, he would steal an entire scene. He was so artful about it that one wouldn't realize what was going on until it was too late."

References

1. ^ Всероссийский реестр музеев. "Камерный шаляпинский зал"
2. ^ ^{a b} Schonberg, Virtuosi, 339.
3. ^ Norris, New Grove, 714.
4. ^ http://www.grazhdanin.com/grazhdanin.phtml?var=Arkhiv/2002/16-17/statya10&number=?16-17%C2%A02002%D0%B3
5. ^ Time magazine covers by Boris Chaliapin at time.com
6. ^ See the translator's note (by Nina Froud) in the 1967 work.
7. ^ Michael Scott, The Record of Singing Vol. 1 (Duckworth, London 1977), 223.
8. ^ Schonberg, Virtuosi, 340.
9. ^ Schonberg, Virtuosi, 336.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Feodor Chaliapin

• Profile
• Tatar Museums (in English)
• Chalyapin and Kazan (Russian)
• Kazan: Kultura (Russian)
• Theodore Chaliapine includes two recordings
• Chaliapine - six photographs in character
• Another biography of Fyodor Shalyapin
• Memorial house of F. I. Shalyapin, Moscow, many pictures, five recordings
• Translated narod.ru webpage: Biography and songlist of Feodor Chaliapin.
• History of the Tenor - Sound Clip and Narration
• Several digitally restored Chaliapine recordings

v • d • e Kievan Rus' Grand Duchy of Moscow Tsardom of Russia Russian Empire Soviet Union Russian Federation Lists of Russians Leaders · before 1168 · 1168-1917 · 1917-1991 · 1991-present · Prime Ministers · Metropolitans and Patriarchs Foreign Ministers · Field Marshals · Cosmonauts · Explorers · Inventors · Architects · Artists Ballet dancers · Opera singers · Composers · Philosophers · Playwrights · Poets · Novelists

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)