Release Date: 31 October 2002
Label: Naxos - Historical / Naxos Historical
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 2
Barcode: 636943174821
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: CHALIAPIN, Feodor
Description
Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938)A Vocal Portrait‘The truth and directness of his singing are such that one forgets it is singing; singing usually implies some strain or effort, but Chaliapin’s seems the most inevitably natural utterance’.Richard Capell, 1914The international career of Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin began in Milan in March 1901 with performances of Boito’s Mefistofele and ended only months before his death in Paris in 1938. During this period he recorded some 130 different titles and this Vocal Portrait includes discs made throughout this career, from several different corners of his repertory. Well before that auspicious Italian début, in which Caruso also sang, — a thousand pities that they never recorded together - Chaliapin had achieved considerable success in his Russian homeland, first with appearances at Tiflis Opera in 1893, soon progressing to the Imperial Opera at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, where he became a friend of the actor Mamont Dalsky. Under Dalsky’s direction, Chaliapin learned much about the mental and psychological preparation needed for opera performance, wisdom that he brought to bear on performances throughout his life and which assured him the reputation as the twentieth century’s supreme dramatic basso. From St Petersburg, Chaliapin moved in 1896 to Moscow and in 1899 joined the Bolshoy Opera, of which he remained a member until the outbreak of the First World War. By that time he had already sung at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1907-8), with Dyagilev’s company in Paris (from 1908), and with the same ensemble at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in 1913-14. Chaliapin returned to the Mariinsky at the end of the war, but finally left Russia in 1921, never to return. He was already widely known for his portrayals of Boris and Varlaam in Boris Godunov, Mephistopheles (both Boito’s and Gounod’s); Don Quichotte in Massenet’s opera, which he created in Monte Carlo in 1910, and Igor, Galitzkiy and Khan Konchak in Borodin’s Prince Igor. Of these rôles Chaliapin was the greatest interpreter of his day. His impersonations of Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Leporello in Don Giovanni, and King Philip in Don Carlos were similarly celebrated, if less idiomatic than his other assumptions. To them all he brought an individual approach and a huge physical stage presence that dominated every performance. In the world of song, again principally Russian, Chaliapin was also an eager interpreter, though as the accompanist Gerald Moore recalled in his Memoirs of an Accompanist —Am I too Loud?:‘…in the light of my experience now, I say that Chaliapin was not a first-class Lieder singer…The most discriminating devotee of Schubert or Schumann would be swept, temporarily at least, off his feet, against his better judgment, by the man’s histrionic mastery and the power of his personal magnetism…It was all a
Tracklisting
William Primrose
William Primrose
Vinay:Nbc So&Chorus:Toscanini
Vienna Po:Knappertsbusch
Vienna Po:Furtwangler
Vienna&Berlin Po:Furtwangler
Various Composer
Various (1923-1955)
