Feodor Ivanovitch Chaliapin Overview

Huge face, huge voice, huge presence: the distinguishing characteristics of Fyodor Chaliapin, Russian Basso of the early twentieth century's opera stage. At the same moment that film was gaining momentum as a medium, Chaliapin seemed to anticipate, and set the standard for, artists like Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The uniquely natural, almost conversational quality of Chaliapin's deep, low voice always merited critical attention, but it is his dramatic ability, like that of all truly great opera artists, that cinched the legacy. He embodied Wagner's vision of opera as "Gesamtkunstwerk," displaying essential elements of nearly all of opera's ingredients. Rachmaninov claimed "He sang as Tolstoy wrote." Konstantin Stanislavsky claims to have based his "method" on Chaliapin's intense integration of presence and artistry. Maryinsky ballet master Michel Fokine saw refined dancerly art in his stage movements. Chaliapin's hands, like Lugosi's, seemed capable of telling an entire story independent of plot. Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin's expressivity was born in the pain of a hard, cold, Dostoevskian Russia and came of age during its colorful, modernist heyday. He was born in February 1873, his father drunk and his mother downtrodden. He found solace, and the beginning of his musical education, in the church choir. By 16, he had run away to join the local touring operetta company; the experience was fraught with angst and harsh working conditions. After nearly ending his career and threatening to end his life in frustration, he found a mentor in Dimitry Ustatov. This teacher fostered in him not only singing talent, but also a flair for the dramatic. Chaliapin built a name for himself in his native country by performing traditional bass roles, usually villains (his most famous was "Mephistophele"). At both the Imperial and Bolshoi companies, he interpreted the greater part of the Russian repertoire to acclaim and popularity; abroad, he became the first Russian opera artist to gain international recognition. After his La Scala debut in 1901, Chaliapin took his talents to London, the Metropolitan stage in New York, and to Diaghilev's Paris. He remained in Paris after he emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1921.