CHALIAPIN Fedor (C-35)

Russian singer (bass). Chaliapin had no professional education. From the age of 12 he participated in choirs and small theatrical entertainments, wandered around the cities of the Volga region, Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Since 1893 - on the professional stage, since 1899 - the leading soloist of the Bolshoi Theater, often sang on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater (St. Petersburg). In 1901-1914, he made several tours in Europe and America, which brought him fame as the greatest singer of the actor's warehouse. He sang in the largest theaters in the world. The highest achievements of F. Chaliapin's roles are considered to be Mephistopheles in S. Gounod's Faust, Boris Godunov in M.P. Mussorgsky's opera of the same name, Ivan Susanin in M.I. Glinka's Life for the Tsar, Don Basilio in J. Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Initially, he sincerely sympathized with the revolutionary movement in Russia, considered himself a participant in it, but became disillusioned with the policy of the communist authorities and left Soviet Russia in 1922. On August 24, 1927, by a decree of the SNK of the RSFSR, he was deprived of the right to return to the USSR. In emigration, he toured a lot and successfully around the world, performing in opera and concerts of chamber vocal music (repertoire – up to 400 works of various kinds, mainly chamber and folk song genres). He acted as an opera director, starred in films, was a talented sculptor, painter, graphic artist, had a literary gift, author of the memoirs "Mask and Soul" (1932). In 1918, he was the first Soviet artist to be awarded the title of People's Artist of the Republic.