Opera Scotland

International Celebrity Concert 1922International Celebrity Concert

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Fyodor Shalyapin (or Feodor Chaliapine)

Fyodor Shalyapin had sung opera in London, but had not previously sung in Scotland.

 

News Item

Sunday Post:  Sunday, 24 September 1922  (p11)

Come to Stay

'Britain is to be Chaliapine's home in future, and his wife and children will settle here with him.  The great Russian bass singer has been allowed by the Bolshevik authorities to bring away his many valuable tapestries and pictures.

He is at present touring in the South of England, and is booked for America next spring.  Maxim Gorky and he put their heads together at Bad Homburg recently, with a resulting Russian scenario and a big role for Chaliapine.  An American syndicate have secured the rights of production, and it will probably be put on in New York next April, after the singer's season there at the Metropolitan Opera House.

 

Edinburgh Advertisement

Scotsman:  Wednesday, 4 October 1922  (p2)

Usher Hall,  Saturday 14 October, at 3

'The Great Russian Bass

CHALIAPINE

Only Appearance in Scotland

The World's Greatest

Lyric and Dramatic Artist

All critics unite in exhausting their adjectives to laud his performances

Chaliapine is a superlative artiste, who is not only a GREAT SINGER,

but also a GREAT ACTOR marvellously united in one man.

MAX RABINOVITCH (Pianist)

Prices - 15/-,  12/-,  7/6,  5/9,  3/6.

PATERSON, SONS & CO., LTD 27 GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH.

A Stamped Addressed Envelope must accompany all Orders for Tickets.'

 

An Edinburgh Review

Scotsman:  Monday, 16 October 1922  (p6)

M Chaliapine's Recital - A Great Programme of Songs

'Edinburgh has had long to wait for an opportunity of hearing M Chaliapine, but the opportunity came on Saturday afternoon, in the Usher Hall, and furnished a truly wonderful artistic experience.  Great as M Chaliapine is on the operatic stage,  it is questionable whether he is not even greater on the concert platform, for with something essentially grand there is combined a subtlety of interpretation, for which the stage, with its broad and comparatively simple effects, scarcely affords sufficiend scope.

'At any rate, on Saturday afternoon, with no support  beyond the admirable accompaniments of M Max Rabinovitch, the art of M Chaliapine seemed to find an absolutely complete expression.  It is a very individual art, for while its foundation is sterling good singing, it gains immensely from a wealth of significant dramatic gesture.  It is a convention, which has only of late come to be ignored to any extent, that concert singers should refrain from gesture, and there have been singers with a taste for the dramatic whose gestures have prompted the reflection that it is a convention in favour of which there is perhaps a good deal to be said.

'On Saturday, however, M Chaliapine's gestures were always part of the song.  Simply, and with no histrionic exaggeration, he lived the spirit of the song before his audience.  A striking example of this was supplied by his rendering of Schumann's ''Two Grenadiers.''  There was nothing to distract the attention from the music,  but scenery, costume, and make-up could scarcely have supplied a more vivid impression of the broken old soldier.

'Schumann's song, however, was only one masterpiece of interpretation out of many.  M Chaliapine sang a dozen or more songs, covering a wide range of sentiment and style - Rimsky-Korsakov's ''The Prophet,''  Dargomijsky's ''We Parted Haughtily,''  Malashkin's ''O, Could I But Express in Song,'' Schubert's ''Doppelgänger'';  ''Madamina, il catalogo,'' from Mozart's Don Giovanni;   Glinka's ''Midnight Review,''  Koenemann's ''When the King Went Forth to War,'' and others.  Of them all, there is only one thing to be said - they were superb.

'On the purely vocal side, with a bass voice of phenomenal range and volume of tone, M Chaliapine combines a flexibility and control of the most remarkable kind, and he can sustain a note with a purity and evenness of tone which many an accomplished soprano might envy.  His wonderful voice, however, is only the foundation of a great art.  In his recitals M Chaliapine adopts a novel procedure.  His programme contains over seventy songs, and he selects his songs as he proceeds, announcing the number of each.  It is an admirable arrangement, with but one defect, that it sends the audience away regretting the songs that they did not hear.

'Apart from his accompaniments, worthy of a great occasion, M Rabinovitch proved himself a fine soloist.  There was a splendid vivacity in his rendering of Goldstein's ''Paraphrase on a Strauss Waltz'', and he also played the Glinka-Balakireff ''The Lark,'' a Scriabin ''Etude,'' and the Schubert-Liszt ''Hark, Hark, the Lark,''  with great charm.

'There was a large and appropriately enthusiastic audience, and M