27.01.2012

Tatar Opera Theatre on Fedor Shaliapin’s birthday to show Boris Godunov

(Kazan, January 27, Tatar-inform). On 13 February, Fedor Shaliapin’s 139th birthday, the 30th international opera festival in Kazan will be presented a popular musical drama by Musorgsky, Boris Godunov. The opera was a landmark in Fedor Shaliapin’s career, making the singer the world’s greatest performer of the Tsar Boris part.

Fedor Shaliapin was born in 1873 in Kazan. From nine years old he sang in church choirs and learned how to play the violin, while working as an apprentice to shoemakers, turners, carpenters, bookbinders and copyists. Here he made his first steps in art. At twelve Shaliapin began, as an extra, to appear in performances staged by a company coming on tour to Kazan. On 29 March 1890, he had a stage debut, playing the part of Zaretsky in Eugene Onegin, presented by the Kazan Thespian Art Lovers Society.

His opera singer career six years later made a quantum leap, when in 1896 the famous millionaire and art patron Savva Mamontov invited him to join his company. The pinnacle of Shaliapin’s career was the performance of the Boris Godunov  part in Musorgsky’s eponymous opera. The part placed him on the pedestal of the Russian Empire’s best opera singer.

Shaliapin’s first performance of the Boris Godunov part took place in 1898 at a private Russian Opera in Moscow. A review, on 10 December 1898 published by the Russkie Vedomosti newspaper, read: “From the makeup to every posture and musical intonation, it was something remarkably vivid, prominent and glowing.” Shaliapin had had no such overwhelming success in any of his parts before, the festival’s press service reports.