Feodor Chaliapin

Russian opera singer Feodor Chaliapin (1873–1938) was an international sensation and is considered the greatest Russian singer of the twentieth century, as well as the greatest male operatic actor ever. The possessor of a large, deep and expressive basso profundo, he was celebrated at major opera houses all over the world and established the tradition of naturalistic acting in operas. The only sound film which shows his acting style is Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933).


Russian postcard, no. 2036. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard, no. 499. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Arrigo Boito's opera 'Mefistofele'. He sang the title role on the occasion of his first appearance outside Russia at La Scala, Milan in 1901 and also on his North American debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1907. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard, no. 57. Photo: publicity still for the stage production of Modest Mussorgsky's opera 'Boris Godunov'. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Feodor Chaliapin as Don Quixote. German postcard by B.K.W.I.


Russian postcard by Dynamo, no. MB 22975-86, 1954.

His approach revolutionised acting in opera

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин, or Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin) was born in 1873, into a poor peasant family in Omet Tawi, near Kazan, Russia. His childhood was full of suffering, hunger, and humiliation. From the age of 10, he worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker, a sales clerk, a carpenter, and a lowly clerk in a district court before joining, at age 17, a local operetta company. In 1890, Chaliapin was hired to sing in a choir at the Semenov-Samarsky private theatre in Ufa. There he began singing solo parts. In 1891, he toured Russia with the Dergach Opera. In 1892, he settled in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia), because he found a good teacher, Dmitri Usatov, who gave Chaliapin free professional opera training for one year. He also sang at the St. Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral in Tbilisi. In 1893, he began his career at the Tbilisi Opera, and a year later, he moved to Moscow upon the recommendation of Dmitri Usatov.

In 1895, Chaliapin debuted at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre as Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod’s 'Faust', in which he was a considerable success. In 1896 he also joined Mamontovs Private Russian Opera in Moscow, where he mastered the Russian, French, and Italian roles that made him famous. Savva Mamontov was a Russian industrialist and philanthropist, who staged the operas, conducted the orchestra, trained the actors, taught them singing and paid all the expenses. At Mamontov's, he met Sergei Rachmaninoff, who started as an assistant conductor there. The two men remained friends for life.

Feodor Chaliapin as Czar Ivan the Terrible. Russian postcard, sent by mail in 1905.


Maxim Gorky and Feodor Chaliapin. Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson. Chaliapin collaborated with Gorky, who wrote and edited his memoirs, which he published in 1933. They broke after the publication.


Maxim Gorky and Feodor Chaliapin. Russian postcard, no. 1213. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Feodor Chaliapin. Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Feodor Chaliapin as Don Quixote. German postcard by B.K.W.I.

The undisputed best basso in the first half of the 20th century

Feodor Chaliapin was torn between his two families for many years, living with one in Moscow, and with another in St. Petersburg. With Maria Petzhold and their three daughters, he left Russia in 1922 as part of an extended tour of Western Europe. They would never return. The family settled in Paris. A man of lower-class origins, Chaliapin was not unsympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution and his emigration from Russia was painful. Although he had left Russia for good, he remained a tax-paying citizen of Soviet Russia for several years. Finally, he divorced in 1927 and married Maria Petzhold.

Chaliapin worked for impresario Sol Hurok and from 1921 on, he sang for eight seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His debut at the Met in the 1907 season had been disappointing due to the unprecedented frankness of his stage acting. In 1921, the public in New York had grown more broad-minded and the eight seasons were a huge success. According to Steve Shelokhonov at IMDb, Chaliapin was the undisputed best basso in the first half of the 20th century. He revolutionised opera by bringing serious acting in combination with great singing.

His first open break with the Soviet regime occurred in 1927 when the government, as part of its campaign to pressure him into returning to Russia, stripped him of his title of 'The First People’s Artist of the Soviet Republic' and threatened to deprive him of Soviet citizenship. Prodded by Joseph Stalin, Chaliapin’s longtime friend Maxim Gorky tried to persuade him to return to Russia. Gorky broke with him after Chaliapin published his memoirs, 'Man and Mask: Forty Years in the Life of a Singer' (Maska i dusha, 1932), in which he denounced the lack of freedom under the Bolsheviks.

The only sound film which shows Chaliapin's acting style is Don Quixote/Adventures of Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933). He had also starred onstage as the knight in Jules Massenet's 1910 opera, 'Don Quichotte', but the 1933 film does not use Massenet's music, and is more faithful to Miguel de Cervantes' novel than the opera. In fact, there were three versions of this early sound film. Georg Wilhelm Pabst shot simultaneously with the German language version also English and French versions. Feodor Chaliapin Sr. starred in all three versions of Don Quixote, but with a different supporting cast. Sancho Pansa was played by Dorville in the German and French versions but by George Robey in the English version.

Benoit A. Racine at IMDb: "These films (the French, English and German versions) were an attempt to capture his legendary stage performance of this character even though the songs are by Jacques Ibert. Ravel had also been asked to compose the songs for the film but he missed the deadline and his songs survive on their own with texts that are different from those found here. The interplay between the French and English versions is fascinating. Some scenes are done exactly the same for better or worse, some use the same footage, re-cut to edit out performance problems, while others have slight variants in staging and dialogue. (The English version was doctored by Australian-born scriptwriter and director John Farrow, Mia's father, by the way.) Even though the films are short and they transform, reduce and simplify considerably the original novel, they still manage to carry the themes and the feeling that would make Man of La Mancha a hit several decades later and be evocative of Cervantes' Spain."

In the late 1930s, Feodor Chaliapin Sr. suffered from leukaemia and kidney ailment. In 1937, he died in Paris, France. He was laid to rest is the Novodevichy Monastery Cemetery in Moscow. Chaliapin was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6770 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. In 1998, the TV film Chaliapin: The Enchanter (Elisabeth Kapnist, 1998) followed.

His son Boris Chaliapin became a famous painter. who painted the portraits used on 414 covers of the Time magazine between 1942 and 1970. Another son Feodor Chaliapin Jr. became a film actor, who appeared in character roles in such films as the Western Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill (Mario Costa, 1965) with Gordon Scott, and Der Name der Rose/The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986), starring Sean Connery. His first wife, Iola Tornagi, lived in the Soviet Union until 1959 when Nikita Khrushchev brought the 'Thaw'. Tornagi was allowed to leave the Soviet Union and reunited with her son Feodor Chaliapin Jr., in Rome, Italy.


Russian postcard, no. 495. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Arrigo Boito's opera 'Mefistofele'. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard, no. 496. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Arrigo Boito's opera 'Mefistofele'. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard, no. 499. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Arrigo Boito's opera 'Mefistofele'. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard, no. 500. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard, no. 521. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Don Quichote/Adventures of Don Quixote (1933). Source: LikeManyThingThings (YouTube).

Sources: Steve Shelokhonov (IMDb), Benoit A. Racine (IMDb), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 16 September 2023.

EFSP's Dazzling Dozen: A Night at the Opera

Nowadays, you can enjoy a night at The Metropolitan Opera in New York in your local cinema. In December 2006, The Met started a series of performance transmissions shown live in high definition in cinemas around the world. The series expanded from an initial six transmissions to 10 in the 2014–2015 season and today reaches more than 2,000 venues in 70 countries across six continents. But long before these transmissions started, several opera stars were already very popular in the cinema. Today 12 dazzling postcards of opera performers who also became film stars.


Lina Cavalieri. French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1188. Sent by mail in 1905. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.

Around 1900, Italian soprano Lina Cavalieri (1874-1944) was considered the most beautiful woman on earth. In the 1910s, she pursued a career in the silent cinema in Italy and in the United States.


Maxim Gorky and Feodor Chaliapin. Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин) (1873–1938) was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large, deep and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form. The only sound film which shows his acting style is Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933). Chaliapin collaborated with novelist Maxim Gorky, who wrote and edited his memoirs, which he published in 1933.


Enrico Caruso. Italian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) was an Italian operatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic. Between 1908 and 1919 he appeared in five films.


Carolina White. Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 56. Photo: La Fotominio. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri (Domenico Gaido, 1921).

American opera singer Carolina White (1885-1961) had a short-lived film career. She played opposite the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso in My Cousin (Edward José, 1918). In 1921 she played the love interest of Luciano Albertini in the 4-part episode film Il ponte dei sospiri, directed by Domenico Gaido, and partly shot on location in Venice. After that White didn't act in film anymore. She died in Rome in 1961.


Geraldine Farrar. Dutch postcard by GG Co., no. 2419.

American silent film star Geraldine Farrar (1882-1967) was one of the most famous opera singers of the early twentieth century and one of the great beauties of her day. She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed 'Gerry-flappers'. From 1915 to 1920, she also starred in more than a dozen films, which were filmed during the then traditional 8 week summer hiatus from the opera house and concert hall. Her films included Cecil B. De Mille's adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen (1915). One of her most notable screen roles was as Joan of Arc in Joan the Woman (Cecil B. DeMille, 1917).


Richard Tauber. Dutch postcard. Photo: Filma Film. Publicity still for Ich glaub nie mehr an eine Frau (Max Reichmann, 1930).

Austrian opera singer Richard Tauber (1891-1948) was one of the world's finest Mozartian tenors of the 20th century. Some critics commented that "his heart felt every word he sang". He also tested the then new talking pictures in such popular musical films as Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame (1929) with Marlene Dietrich, Das Land des Lächelns (1930) and Melodie der Liebe (1932).


Willi Domgraf Fassbaender. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 152/1, 1932. Photo: Aafa Film. Publicity still for Theodor Körner (Carl Boese, 1932).

Celebrated German opera singer Willi Domgraf Fassbaender (1897–1978) was one of the leading lyric baritones of the inter-war period. He was particularly associated with Mozart and Italian roles. ‘The Italian baritone’ starred in the 1930’s in a number of musical films, which helped his shining international reputation.


Gitta Alpár. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8756/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Angelo Fotos.

Hungarian-born Gitta Alpár (1903-1991) was a Jewish actress, opera and operetta singer, and dancer, whose career in Germany was broken by the Nazis.


Beniamino Gigli. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9400/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Itala Film.

Actor and opera singer Beniamino Gigli (1890-1957) was one of the most famous Italian tenors, internationally respected for the beauty of his voice and his vocal technique. Between 1935 and 1950, 'Benito Mussolini's favourite singer' also starred in various German and Italian entertainment films.


Nelly Corradi. Italian postcard by ASER, no. 173. Photo: De Antonis.

Beautiful Nelly Corradi (1914–1968) was an Italian opera singer and actress. She made her film debut in Max Ophüls’s La signora di tutti (1934) and had her biggest successes after the war with opera films like Lucia di Lammermoor (1946).


Mario Lanza. British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 40. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Great Caruso (Richard Thorpe, 1951).

Mario Lanza (1921–1959) was an American tenor, actor and Hollywood film star of the late 1940s and the 1950s. His masterpiece was The Great Caruso (Richard Thorpe, 1951), the top-grossing film in the world in 1951. Lanza's voice was so dazzling that an awestruck Arturo Toscanini called it the "voice of the century".


Maria Callas. German promotion card by Columbia, no. DrW 2946 d. Photo: Angus McBean.

Greek-American soprano Maria Callas (1923–1977) was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini and further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina. Her most famous film appearance was the title role in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea (1969).

Sources: The Metropolitan Opera, Wikipedia and IMDb.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth at the The Best Hearts are Crunchy. You can visit her by clicking on the button below.