Patrick Bade
Great Singers of Imperial Russia

Patrick Bade | Great Singers of Imperial Russia | 06.05.22

Visuals displayed and music played throughout presentation.

- Well, I have a feast for you today of wonderful singers, and some very striking images, and some extraordinary stories. I’ve mentioned before that opera was an exotic luxury import to Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Initially, the composers, the operas, they were all imported. And very often, right up to the First World War, the top singers were imported as well, and there were great rewards for any celebrated singer who was prepared to make the journey to Russia. One of the most celebrated of all visitors was Adelina Patti, favourite soprano of Verdi, and generally considered to be the greatest soprano of the mid to late 19th century. And she arrived in 1869. She was paid fabulous sums of money in real terms, and she was showered with jewels and priceless gifts. And the Tsar Alexander III, who you see on the left-hand side, he told her that she should call him and his wife, the Tsarina, Mama and Papa. The other great Italian singer who was particularly associated with Russia was Mattia Battistini. His nicknames were The Glory of Italy, The King of Baritones. And he first came to Russia in 1888. It would’ve been a bit easier for him. I’m not quite sure how Patti got there. Verdi, in 1861, when he went to Saint Petersburg, he had to go all the way from his house in Italy to Saint Petersburg in a horse-drawn carriage.

But in the 1860s, the railway system, and ‘70s and '80s, those years, the great railway system across all of Russia was created. So certainly by 1888, Battistini could arrive there by rail. And he came for a tour of the Russian Empire every year from 1888 to 1914. Here you see him as Rigoletto, as Hamlet on the left-hand side in Ambroise Thomas’s operas, Don Giovanni. And this is a list of the places he went to, where you can see here, in 1897 he went to Warsaw. He also went to Saint Petersburg. And the same year he went… Oh no, this was 1902. He went to Kyiv, Odessa, and Kharkov. Somebody asked me last week, did Warsaw have an opera house? Yes, it did. Had a very splendid opera house, as you can see here. In fact, all over the Russian Empire, there were, this is the interior of the Opera House in Warsaw. This is Saint Petersburg. This is the Bolshoi in Moscow. This is Kyiv. And this is Odessa. So, very magnificent opera houses all over the Russian Empire. And I’m going to start off by playing you a record of Battistini, which I hope will show you why he was paid so much money, and so admired. There are many connoisseurs who will say that Battistini is the greatest baritone to have made records. He’s also one of the very few singers, including Patti, of course, whose style was formed before singing was really transformed at the end of the 19th century by Wagner, by verismo. So he is really the old school bel canto, and its beautiful, smooth instrumental tone with exquisite nuances, very delicate shading.

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There’s another Italian who won a place in the hearts of Russians. This is Olimpia Boronat. She began her career in Italy, but arrived in Russia in 1891. And she married a Polish nobleman, and she remained in Russia for the rest of her career. You can see she was a fine figure of a woman, and was considered to be a beauty. And she certainly had a very beautiful voice and a limpid coloratura technique, as you will hear in the “Sempre Libera” from “La Traviata.”

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But by the turn of the century, there were very fine homegrown singers. And the most loved Russian soprano from 1902, when she made her debut, right up to the 1930s, actually, she was one of the very few singers who stayed behind after the Revolution and remained a very popular singer. This is Antonina Nezhdanova. And she has a lyric coloratura voice. It’s a lovely rounded sound. There’s nothing shrill about it. And also an excellent technique, and a range that takes her right up to the top F, as you’ll hear in the second of the “Queen of the Night” arias.

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Now, her career was an almost entirely Russian affair. There was only one year when she went to Monte Carlo and Paris, took part in a very famous performance of “Barber of Seville” in Monte Carlo with Chaliapin and with De Lucia, the top singers of the day. So here she is in a Russian showpiece, “The Nightingale,” which may be familiar to you. It’s been sung and recorded by many coloratura sopranos since.

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Most of the images I’m showing you are taken from postcards, and most of them are actually postcards in my collection. And I bought nearly all my Russian photos and postcards from a very charming Ukrainian guy called Andrei. He deals in these things. He’s actually, at the moment, his wife and his daughter are refugees in this country, and he himself has actually enlisted in the struggle against the Russian invaders. So of course I think of him, and wish him well. But he brings over, he picks up these cards in flea markets in Kyiv, and he brings them to London. And it’s always very interesting, you can tell which singers were the most popular singers, and you can tell which operas were the most popular operas, because there are many more images available.

And this is the great tenor, Dmitri Smirnov, I’ll play you him shortly. He was actually my grandfather’s favourite tenor when my grandfather lived in Saint Petersburg before the First World War. And when my grandfather and grandmother gave me their record collection, there was actually a record of Dmitri Smirnov in their collection. So I’ve known his voice from a very early age, and he’s, as Nadir, in Bizet’s opera “The Pearl Fishers.” Or as my Ukrainian friend calls it, “Looking for Pearls,” in the literal translation of that, it’s like Chinese whispers, French into Russian, and Russian back to English. And this clearly was very, very popular in Russia, 'cause there are an enormous number of postcard images of singers in “The Pearl Fishers.” And this is the Act Two duet. And we’re going to hear Nezhdanova again, with another great Russian tenor of the period, this is Leonid Sobinov.

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This is the glamorous Maria Kuznetsova. She was the daughter of the portrait painter Kuznetsov, who did the famous portrait of Tchaikovsky that I showed you a couple of weeks ago. But she was a very glamorous character, who led a rather tempestuous life, one way or another. She was not only an excellent singer, as you’ll hear, with a really gorgeous voice. She was trained as a dancer, and actually appeared professionally as a dancer. She took the role of Potiphar’s wife in the Diaghilev ballet “The Legend of Joseph,” that I talked about last week. And this is the costume that Leon Bakst designed for Kuznetsova in that role. But we’re going to hear her again, in “Traviata” as Violetta.

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A lovely trill there at the end, rather than the alternative high D, which you sometimes get. Well, she, as I said, she had an adventurous life, and she had a very narrow escape during the Russian Revolution. And she managed to escape on board a Swedish ship, rather improbably disguised as a cabin boy. I don’t think she could have made a very convincing cabin boy, and I presume she must have jettisoned the corset before putting on a cabin boy’s costume. But she got to Paris, and she continued her career in Paris, although she landed up living, as a very old lady, living in a brothel of all places. My dear friend Kyra Vayne went to her in Paris in the 1950s for lessons, and found her being very lovingly looked after by the lady inmates of the brothel.

Here’s another glamorous Russian soprano of the period, Lydia Lipkowska. She also had a successful international career, appearing in Paris, Monte Carlo, London. New York, she wasn’t so successful. She was really in the shadow of Tetrazzini, who was the great coloratura at the time. But she’s a very delightful singer, a very appealing singer. She also had, actually, a narrow escape from the Russian Revolution. This time it was through the port of Odessa, and she was rescued by a French sea captain, who took her on board his ship and then actually married her when they got to safety. Here she is in the final scene of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Snow Maiden.” It’s one of my absolute favourite Russian operas. It’s a fantastic tale of the Snow Maiden, who is the daughter of King Frost. And she spends the entire opera wandering around looking for love, and not finding it, and being rejected. And then in the final scene, finally she finds love. But of course it’s fatal for her, because when she finds love, she warms up, and she melts. And that’s the end of her. But this is the scene where she’s literally melting with love.

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Now we get to Dmitri Smirnov. As I said, he was my grandfather’s favourite tenor. He had an important international career. Great successes. In Paris, in particular. He got to the Met, had two seasons at the Met. But he had a similar problem to Lipkowska. As I said, she couldn’t really compete with Tetrazzini, and Smirnov, of course, nobody could compete with Caruso. Caruso had really changed people’s expectations of what a tenor sounds like. It was a very big sound, with a kind of baritonal quality to it, very warm voluptuous sound. Smirnov had a very typically Russian sound. I’ll be interested to know whether you like it or not. It’s a plangent, slightly reedy sound, with an element of vibrato in it. So it’s not to everybody’s taste, but he’s a most exquisite artist. Here we are going to hear him in Lensky’s aria from “Eugene Onegin.”

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And I’m going to play you another. That was, you may have noticed, an electric recording rather than an acoustic one. He had a long career, and continued, particularly successful as a recitalist outside of Russia. He escaped, again, from after the Revolution. And they wanted him back. You know, he was a singer who was considered a national treasure. So there were many offers for him to go back, but he didn’t. But after the end of his career, he retired to Lithuania. So, of course, during the Second World War, he did eventually find himself again under Soviet rule, and died in Lithuania in 1943. Here he’s singing, this is also an electric recording, so it gives you quite a good idea of the voice. This is the, oops, the “Berceuse” by Gretchaninov.

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And it’s a very perfumed style, isn’t it？ With those morendo effects, those dying-away effects, and the beautiful floated notes. And of course, it suits the popular song of the Indian guest from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Sadko.”

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Now, to judge it from the number of postcards you find with singers in Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,” that must have certainly been one of the most performed operas in Russia at the time. So I’m going to play you one final example of the passionate and elegant Smirnov, singing as Romeo in Gounod’s opera.

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Wonderful diminuendo there on that climactic note. This is a baritone, Georges Baklanoff, who was a famously handsome man, a real heartthrob. Very tall, he was six foot three. And he not only has a very splendid voice, as you will hear, but he was a great singing actor, rather in the manner of Chaliapin. He was also a master of disguise, and he was very good at assuming different characters, which turned out to be useful. In 1914, he was trying to get back to Russia, and he had to cross Turkey, which was, of course, on the opposite side in the First World War. And apparently he managed to get all the way across Turkey disguised as a woman behind a veil. Must have been quite some feat, I would say, of impersonation for a man of six foot three to get away with that one. But we’re going to hear him in Anton Rubinstein’s Opera “The Demon.” This was very popular in Russia, and standard repertoire throughout the Tsarist period, and actually right up to the 1950s. But it’s never, it’s a fine opera, but it’s never caught on outside of Russia.

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This is the dramatic soprano Félia Litvinne. She was born in Saint Petersburg. Her father was Russian, her mother was Canadian, but she had a very international career. I’m cheating slightly to include her, but she’s too good to leave out. She was actually officially appointed a court singer by Tsar Alexander III in 1890, but she was trained in Paris, and she was trained of course, by the great Pauline Viardot. And most of her career was actually Paris based, rather than Saint Petersburg based. It’s a very, very luscious, sumptuous, extraordinary voice that comes across despite the primitive recordings of the early 1900s. Here she is as Delilah in Saint-Saëns’s “Samson and Delilah.”

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That’s a voice with a very dark colour to it. And of course, Delilah is usually sung by a mezzo. Litvinne had, you know, the richness of a mezzo, even of a contralto, actually. But as we shall hear in a minute, she had the range of a soprano. She could go quite easily up to a top C. Wagner took off very quickly in Russia in the 1890s. And there were some very splendid Wagnerian performances from a vocal point of view, including this local tenor. This is Ivan Ershov, and I would say most connoisseurs, most record collectors, consider that he is actually amongst the very best heldentenors on record. It’s a very easy emission of tone, none of that terrible, effortful, strangulated tone that you so often get with heroic Wagner tenors. And he was also very famous in roles of Meyerbeer, such as the “Prophète.” On the left, he’s in Meyerbeer’s “Prophète.” On the right, as Lohengrin. I love this picture of him as Lohengrin. He looks like the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz.” And he was a famous Siegfried. How wonderful it would be if we had modern recordings in good sound of Siegfried sung by a singer like Ershov. This is Siegfried at the end of “Götterdämmerung.” There’s Siegfried and Hagen, and we’re going to hear him giving a very musical account of “Siegfried’s Forging Song.”

• [Ivan Ershov] Columbia Records

• [Patrick] And here is the proof that Félia Litvinne has a good top C, and we’re going to hear her in “Brünnhilde’s Battle Cry.” And you’ll also hear that she has an excellent trill, which is something you don’t very often hear from a Brünnhilde.

♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Heiaha ♪ ♪ Heiaha ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Heiaha ♪ ♪ Heiaha ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪ ♪ Ha ♪ ♪ Heiaha ♪ ♪ Hojotoho ♪

And a rather more lyrical example of Wagner, I’m going to play you the opening of the bridal scene, the bridal duet from “Lohengrin,” this time with Smirnov’s great rival, the other great tenor in Russia at the turn of the century, Leonid Sobinov.

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Now, how often does one hear Wagner sung as beautifully as that? Now, interestingly, the only two important singers of Imperial Russia who stayed behind and continued after the Revolution were the two you just heard. They were Antonina Nezhdanova and Sobinov. Certainly Nezhdanova was a woman of the people, and she may well actually have supported the ideals of the Revolution. And she continued to be a very much loved singer, and she sang well into her mid to late sixties. I’m going to finish with a curiosity. This is Antonina Nezhdanova. In the background, you can see her husband, the great conductor Nikolai Golovanov, who I’ll talk about in a later lecture. And here she’s singing, not Bizet, not Wagner, she’s singing in a song in praise of communal farming.

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Not bad, really, for a singer of 65. So let’s see what we’ve got.

Q&A and Comments

Thank you, Myra.

Q: “Did all the Russian singers you mentioned so far study in Russia?” A: No, some did, but quite a lot went, either, the two centres where most singers went to study, from any country, would’ve been either Milan or Paris, at this time.

“Russian singers did not go to study bel canto in Italy.” Well, some did.

Q: “Were they considered world-class singers?” A: Yes, I think. Well, there’s quite a few of those Russian singers went to Paris and had… Lipkowska. In fact, most of the singers I mentioned today did go to Paris. Some got to New York, but particularly Kuznetsova.

Thank you for the correct pronunciation. “Maria Kuznetsova, dance costume designed by Bakst, one wonders how she was able to dance in those patterns.” Yes, indeed. “'Sempre Libera’ tempo.” It’s difficult to say, really, you know, of those records, whether people really sang like that in live on stage, or whether they changed the tempo or changed the way they sang in the recording studio, when they’re recording into a horn. A little bit later, in the inter-war period, where we sometimes have live recordings of singers as well as the studio ones, usually the live ones are slower. I suppose they always had the clock ticking, because you had a very limited amount of time on one side of a 78 RPM record.

Q: “Were the operas sung in Russian? Do you know?” A: Nearly everything I played to you, of course, was in Russian. But certainly, when the foreign singers came to Russia, they didn’t sing in Russian. But people didn’t seem to mind having bilingual performances, I mean, right up to the Second World War. There are plenty of examples, as I think I mentioned, when Chaliapin sang “Boris” at Covent Garden, he sang in Russian. The other soloist sang in Italian, and the chorus sang in French. Thank you, Maria.

Q: “Why did sopranos need to escape Russia?” A: Not because they were Jewish, no. That wasn’t a problem or an issue at that time. Now, I think with people like Kuznetsova and Lipkowska, I think it was because they were too associated with the aristocracy. And so that was what really put them into danger.

Thank you, Faina and Rafael. You said, “I hope the Met doesn’t give up on Eugene-” Oh, that would be really stupid. I hope, no, I’m sure they won’t. No they won’t, nobody’s going to blame Tchaikovsky for Mr. Putin’s atrocities. Yes, he was a wonderful Lensky. “The attempt of simultaneous captions to render the Russian.” I bet. God, bad enough when they do it for English, isn’t it?

Q: That “Adelina Patti was a co-composer”? A: I’m not sure about that. You see, initially, well, it was initially composed before, in the 1850s, before she’d sung in Paris, and really before she’d started her career. But it is true that when it was revived in 1888 in Paris, that Patti was chosen to sing in it, and she worked very closely with Gounod. Whether he took her advice for the revision, or not, I mean, that’s quite possible, I think.

Q: “Did any of the Jewish singers do any cantorial gigs?” A: Well, of course there are, who’s that, the very, very great Polish cantor who died in the Warsaw ghetto. He certainly did things the other way, and he made, he actually recorded operatic arias. And so I think usually it was the other way around, wasn’t it? And Herman Jadlowker, one of the greatest tenors on record, he started and ended his career as a cantor, but the main part of his career was, of course, in opera. So I think there’s a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing.

Yes, yes, Herbert, yes. That is such a voluptuous voice, isn’t it? I’m going to see it tomorrow night with Garanča, so I’m really looking forward to that. Yes, I know. “Isn’t it funny that the sound of-” Well, of course, that was all the acoustic recording could pick up, the sound of, not a very convincing anvil. Thank you, Clara. And thank you for all your nice comments. I know it’s a bit of an obscure subject today, these ancient recordings of ancient singers.

Q: “Did Piatigorsky ever accompany Chaliapin?” A: He could have done, he could have done. It’s not, somebody asked me about who’s the cello player, and I’m afraid I still haven’t looked it up, but it’s certainly not Piatigorsky on the Massenet “Elégie.” Their careers overlapped for about a decade, but I’ve never read, I think, that he accompanied Chaliapin.

So yes, Erica, there were wonderful seasons in Warsaw. Oh, I wanted to look up, I promise you, Erica, as soon as this talk is finished, I’m going to look up to see whether Chaliapin sang in Warsaw, but I’m pretty certain he did.

So that’s it tonight. And I’ve got my other hat on, I’m going to be talking about the Art Deco goddess Tamara de Lempicka on Wednesday. So it’s a very different kind of lecture.

And thank you all for listening, and meet you again on Wednesday.