When was Chaliapin born? Shalyapin Fedor Ivanovich: short biography

In the photo: Chaliapin in a portrait by B. M. Kustodiev. This portrait, painted in 1918, accompanied the singer into exile.

Chaliapin Fyodor Ivanovich (1873-1938), singer.

At the beginning of the 20th century, fame Fedora Chaliapin thundered throughout the world, his performing talent was recognized as incomparable. It all started with falling in love with church singing, which Chaliapin first heard in one of the Kazan churches.

Was born Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin February 13, 1873 in Kazan in the family of a minor employee.

I spent my childhood on the outskirts of Kazan. The family lived either in the suburban village of Ometova, or in Tatarskaya, or in Sukonnaya Sloboda. His father, Ivan Yakovlevich, a Vyatka peasant by birth, served as a clerk, his mother, Evdokia Mikhailovna, earned money by day labor. They lived meagerly; dumplings, Fedya’s favorite dish, were eaten once a month, “after the twentieth,” that is, when his father brought his salary.

He began to work early: he worked as a woodcarver, a copyist of papers, and was an apprentice to a shoemaker. WITH youth had unique vocal abilities.

The boy's life was developing as usual, until something happened in it significant event, which Fyodor Ivanovich himself later recalled in his “memoir” “Mask and Soul”:

“One winter I was skating on a wooden skate on a square in Kazan. There was a magnificent old church of St. Varlaam. Smerz. I wanted to warm myself, and with this worldly intention I entered the church. It was Vespers or All-Night Vigil. And then I heard the choir singing. For the first time in my life I heard a harmonious melody composed of different voices. And they didn’t just sing in unison or third, as I sang with my mother, but the sounds were combined in a perfect harmonic order. (Of course, I would not have been able to understand it and explain it in words then, but this was the wordless impression I got.) It was amazing and wonderful for me. When I came closer to the choir, I, to my surprise, saw ahead standing boys about the same age as myself. These boys held some mysteriously graphed paper in front of them and, looking into it, made the most pleasant sounds with their voices. I gaped in surprise. He listened and listened and went home thoughtfully.

Peers singing, kids just like me. Why shouldn't I sing in the choir? Maybe I could make harmonious sounds with my voice. I am sick and tired of everyone at home with these sounds, especially my mother. I had a treble!”

Fyodor Chaliapin began singing in the churches of Kazan

The regent gave Chaliapin his first lessons in musical notation church choir, and then for several years singing in church brought to the young singer small, but Fixed salary, which he was supposed to give to his parents, “but, of course, he kept some of it away” and spent it on sweets and going to the booth. Memoirs of Chaliapin;

“I enjoyed what a wonderful thing singing is! And it’s a great pleasure for myself, and they also pay money...”

Chaliapin sang in a variety of Kazan churches - in the one where he was baptized, in Varvarinsky on the Arsky Field, in the Spassky Monastery... And, of course, in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. So almost all surviving churches in the historical center of Kazan have the right to acquire a memorial plaque: “Chaliapin sang here.”

Subsequently, Fyodor Ivanovich admitted:

“Personally, although I am not a religious person in the traditional sense, when I come to church and hear “Christ is risen from the dead,” I always feel lifted up. I want to say that a short time I don’t feel the ground, it’s as if I’m standing in the air...”

Theatrical stage of the young Fyodor Chaliapin

Along with the passion for singing, a passion for the theater very soon grew. At the age of twelve, Chaliapin first came to the gallery and from that time on he became, in his own words, “almost insane.” And when the opera came to Kazan, it literally stunned the boy:

“Extraordinary people, unusually dressed up, asking - they sang, answering - they sang, sang, thinking, angry, dying, sang, sitting, standing, in chorus, duets and in every possible way! That order of life amazed me and I liked it terribly.”

His parents, of course, did not understand his passion, and his father from time to time flogged his dissolute son - especially when he came home with his face smeared with burnt cork (among other extras, he represented a savage in a play about Vasco da Gama). But Fyodor did not want to be an office worker, a mechanic, or a janitor. At the age of seventeen, having added two years to himself, he became a chorister in the enterprise “Russian Comic Opera and Operetta” by S. Ya. Semenov-Samarsky and went to Ufa with her. Soon he was already singing small opera roles, replacing sick artists.

First successes, first benefit performance (eighty rubles and, on top of that, a gift from the public - a silver watch on a steel chain)... The young man felt “absolutely happy.” But real success was still far away.

Through hardship to the stars

Travels with operetta troupes brought Chaliapin to Tiflis. He came here “at the brake platform of a freight car,” naturally, with two kopecks in his pocket.

The first time in Tiflis he had a bad time. It was impossible to find work, the suit was all worn out, and lunch happened two days later on the third. Chaliapin recalled about that time:

“Starving in Tiflis is especially unpleasant and difficult, because here everything is fried and boiled on the streets. The sense of smell is tantalized by different delicious smells. I fell into despair, into a frenzy, was ready to beg for alms, but did not dare, and finally decided to commit suicide...”

Fortunately, the desperate intention remained the intention. Chaliapin met the singer and teacher D. A. Usatov, who undertook to teach him for free. He taught, fed, and educated (“Listen, Chaliapin, you smell very bad. Excuse me, but you need to know this! My wife will give you underwear and socks—get yourself in order!”). And a few months later he helped his student conclude his first real opera contract and blessed him to go to Moscow, providing him with letters of recommendation.

“They didn’t let me sing...”

For the first time, Moscow became only a transit point in Chaliapin’s career. Here he met the entrepreneur M.V. Aentovsky and, having joined his opera troupe, left for St. Petersburg. A year later he was already singing on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater, where, however, his talent was not properly appreciated. He recalled his first season as an artist at the Imperial Theatres:

“They didn’t let me sing. I only sang Ruslan and made a fool of myself... It worried me very much...”

The official scene was disappointing with its official attitude. “I was disgusted to go to the theater,” admitted Fyodor Ivanovich, “because of the attitude of the management towards the artists. I was sure that the artist was a free, independent person. And here, when the director appeared backstage, the artists stretched out in front of him like soldiers and shook the director’s two condescendingly extended fingers, smiling sweetly. Previously, I saw such an attitude only in offices.” Chaliapin was unable to make friends among the actors; behind the scenes he felt like a stranger. “I suddenly came to some kind of crossroads... Something was necessary for me, but what? - I did not know".

Chaliapin's first success

The difficult season of 1895-1896 in all respects ended, and Chaliapin went to an exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod as part of S. I. Mamontov’s troupe. Mamontov, who had an exceptional artistic “sense,” immediately appreciated Chaliapin and invited him to leave St. Petersburg and move to Moscow, to his own troupe, for 7,200 rubles a year - in order to pay the penalty to the Imperial Theater in half.

Mamontov’s trust in Chaliapin was great:

“Fedenka, you can do whatever you want in this theater! If you need costumes, tell me and there will be costumes. If you need to put new opera, let's stage an opera."

And here is the testimony of Chaliapin himself:

“Nobody bothered me, they didn’t hit me on the hands, saying that I was making the wrong gestures. Nobody told me how Petrov and Melnikov did this or that. It was as if the chains had fallen from my soul.”

New acquaintances with artists, writers, composers, and critics had a significant influence on the development of Chaliapin as an artist. They partly helped him overcome the inadequacy of his education, which the singer himself acutely felt. Of course, in to a greater extent he played with “feeling,” and he actually had it as a genius. But is it possible to underestimate, for example, interviews with V. O. Klyuchevsky when preparing roles in “historical” operas - “Khovanshchina”, “Pskovite”, “Boris Godunov”?

Without exaggeration, it was Mamontov’s Private Opera that made Chaliapin Chaliapin. Mastery, self-confidence, and fame came to him. But fame, as often happens, did not have an ennobling effect on his nature; on the contrary, it revealed “stuff” in it, as V. A. Serov put it. And it happened amazingly quickly. Konstantin Korovin recalled how Chaliapin once shouted in his workshop under Vrubel and Serov:

“Here I am doing full preparations, and performances without my participation are held almost to an empty hall. What do I get? This is unfair! And they say - Mamontov loves me! If you love, pay. You don’t know Gorky, but he speaks the truth: “You are being exploited.” In general, people in Russia don’t like to pay...”

When Mamontov went bankrupt and was arrested in 1899, Chaliapin did not come to visit him (however, he wrote gratefully about him in his memoirs thirty years later). The era of Private Opera in his life was over, he returned to the stage of the Imperial Theaters, but now he dictated the terms himself.

Great Fyodor Chaliapin

At this time, Fyodor Chaliapin often said the following phrases:

“There are rich people, why can’t I be a rich person?”

“Only birds sing for free.”

Passion for money, angry suspicion, autocratic whims, eternal acting - these traits, which increasingly defined Chaliapin's manner, pushed many away from him. Many were unkind to him and wanted him to fail on stage. But when he started singing, the “stuff” was forgotten:

“What was the secret of Chaliapin’s charm? - Konstantin Korovin asked and answered himself: “The combination of musicality, the art of singing with a wonderful comprehension of the created image.”

Indeed, Chaliapin, by his own admission, did not just “get into the role”, as all actors do (however, it should be noted here that in the “pre-Shalyapin era” opera singers They didn’t care about that either; singing was considered the main thing, not acting), but he literally reincarnated himself - into Godunov, Ivan the Terrible, Mephistopheles, Don Quixote... Chaliapin admitted in a friendly conversation:

“I... forget myself. That's all. And I control myself on stage. Of course, I’m worried, but I hear the music as it flows. I never look at the conductor, I never wait for the director to let me out. I go out myself when necessary. I don't need to tell you when to join. I can hear it myself. I hear the whole orchestra - I notice how the bassoon or viola is behind... You have to feel the music!.. When I sing, I listen to myself. I want you to like it yourself. And if I like myself, it means I sang well.”

“God grant that to everyone...”

Bunin recalled Fyodor Chaliapin:

“Everyone considered Chaliapin very leftist, they roared with delight when he sang “La Marseillaise” or “The Flea,” in which they also saw something revolutionary.”

And the artist himself was not averse to posing in a blouse and cap and showing off his passport, in which he was said to be a peasant. Meanwhile, he had become unaccustomed to the people of the “cloth settlement” over the years of his “non-cloth” life, and he still did not understand the peasants at all and was wary of them. Korovin recalled:

“Chaliapin was afraid of men. Coming to me in Okhotino from his estate, he never passed through the village. I tried to go around the back streets. When he had a chance to talk with the peasants, he said: “Listen, dear fellow, how’s it going?” Yes, your labors are difficult." The Russian peasants answered slyly: “What, Fyodor Ivanovich, there’s no need to blame, we’re living okay.” But there’s not enough wine for the holiday...” Chaliapin pretended that he didn’t understand the hint and didn’t give him any wine.”

Chaliapin “did not accept” the revolution

He “did not accept the revolution,” as they wrote, as if in condolences, in Soviet biographies about any outstanding - so much so that it would be impossible not to write at all - emigrant. Yes, and I couldn’t accept it - with my simple-minded acquisitiveness, my habit of eating two pounds of caviar with kalachi after a bath, my inability to live “in bow.” After all, before it was necessary to bow only occasionally, but now you are welcome to shuffle all the time before the “victorious proletariat” with its wounded gaze through the sight: “You sang to the Tsar, but don’t you want to sing to us?”

In a word, Chaliapin found himself in the position of many. Until October 1917, almost everyone was liberal - some sincerely, some out of indigestion, some out of habit to grumble. And after October, it suddenly turned out that things somehow didn’t turn out as expected... In 1922, the People’s Artist of the Republic (in 1918) went on tour abroad and has not returned to Soviet Russia since then. In the spring of 1938, he died in Paris from leukemia. Last time he performed in public in June 1937, and it was a tragic concert: the great singer
Only honed performing skills, perfect intonation, and the gift of gesture saved him. Chaliapin's voice was no longer there.

Bunin recalled how, shortly before Chaliapin’s death, they listened to the records he recorded together, and he “listened to himself with tears in his eyes, muttering:

- He sang well! God bless everyone!

Native Kazan and its Sukonka became the cradle of childhood and the temple of youth of the great bass of world music Fyodor Chaliapin. Here, in house 58 on the former Georgievskaya Street, he learned the basics of knowledge at the 6th city primary school. It was considered among the best in Kazan, and Chaliapin graduated from it in 1885 with honors. Here, in the Church of the Holy Spirit, little Fedya sang for the first time for people.

In the 80s years XIX century, many visitors to the Kazan Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit paid attention to the vociferous youth singing in the church choir. How did he get there?

After the death of their son and daughter, barely recovering from little Fedya’s illness, the Chaliapin family moved to the then city outskirts, to Sukonnaya Sloboda. Not far from their house, in the block next to the school, stood the Church of the Holy Spirit. But the boy first noticed the church choir in a completely different church, when he went skating to the Haymarket. Pretty cold, he ran into the nearest Varlaam Church and, while he warmed up, listened to its little singers, his peers. Fedya was completely fascinated by their art, and he passionately wanted to find himself among them, to also become a singer. His dream came true precisely in the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit.

This was helped by a happy circumstance: according to some information, the Chaliapins’ neighbor was one of the members of the church choir. Having come with him to the temple, which was always distinguished by its excellent acoustic properties, and again hearing the singers, Fedya began to beg his neighbor to put in a good word for him with the regent. Ivan Osipovich Shcherbinin decided to test the boy’s hearing and listen to his voice. He liked the results, and little Chaliapin was accepted, instructing him to quickly master musical notation. Fedya quickly learned the notes, and from that moment on, in the Spiritual Church of Kazan, the musical destiny of the great Chaliapin began, and his musical worldview began to take shape.

From recognition to vocation!

Fyodor sang with pleasure in the choir of the Holy Spiritual Church. reigned here great atmosphere, he was friends with many priests of the temple and with its rector.

Little Chaliapin's musical career advanced in the Church of the Spirituality by leaps and bounds. Until recently, he only brought notes to the singers, then he sang in the choir - at first without remuneration, as a trainee, and then, three months later, he began to receive his first wages- one and a half rubles! He did not shy away from any orders, he sang at prayer services, and at Christmastide, at weddings and funerals, wherever his beautiful voice was in demand. By all accounts, fate destined him to become a priest or director of a church choir. Many Kazan churches wanted to get Chaliapin’s voice, and he even entered the bishop’s choir, where he now received as much as six rubles a month.

Fyodor’s repertoire also increased and became more diverse: the bishop’s choir, in addition to sacred music, also performed classical works. At the same time, the young man began to perform in Varvarinskaya, Resurrection and other churches and cathedrals, as well as in the choir of the Kazan Real School. And now a true calling was clearly ripening in his soul, which became his destiny - the dream of the theatrical stage.

Ever since he was a child, Fedya was accustomed to saving part of the money he earned from working outside the church. At first he spent it on attending festive performances and buffoonery, and then on the theater. The stage uncontrollably attracted him; Chaliapin was ready to perform on it even as a simple extra, receiving five kopecks per appearance. And even as he grew older, he continued to rejoice like a child: to watch a play for free and even earn money from it - could there be greater happiness for an unknown youth singing in a church choir?

Already today, within the walls of the Holy Spiritual Church, a concert-offering to the memory of Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin “The Spiritual Revelation of Russian Music” took place. I would like to believe that such wonderful events will become a good tradition in this temple.

Russian opera and chamber singer (high bass).
First People's Artist of the Republic (1918-1927, title returned in 1991).

The son of the peasant of the Vyatka province Ivan Yakovlevich Chaliapin (1837-1901), a representative of the ancient Vyatka family of the Shalyapins (Shelepins). Chaliapin's mother is a peasant woman from the village of Dudintsy, Kumensky volost (Kumensky district, Kirov region), Evdokia Mikhailovna (nee Prozorova).
As a child, Fedor was a singer. As a boy, he was sent to study shoemaking with shoemakers N.A. Tonkov, then V.A. Andreev. He received his primary education at Vedernikova’s private school, then at the Fourth Parish School in Kazan, and later at the Sixth Primary School.

Chaliapin himself considered the beginning of his artistic career to be 1889, when he joined the drama troupe of V.B. Serebryakov, initially as a statistician.

On March 29, 1890, the first solo performance- part of Zaretsky in the opera “Eugene Onegin”, staged by the Kazan Society of Performing Art Lovers. Throughout May and early June 1890, he was a chorus member of V.B.’s operetta company. Serebryakova. In September 1890, he arrived from Kazan to Ufa and began working in the choir of an operetta troupe under the direction of S.Ya. Semenov-Samarsky.
Quite by accident I had to transform from a chorister into a soloist, replacing a sick artist in Moniuszko’s opera “Galka” in the role of Stolnik.
This debut brought forward a 17-year-old boy, who was occasionally assigned small opera roles, for example, Ferrando in Il Trovatore. The following year he performed as the Unknown in Verstovsky's Askold's Grave. He was offered a place in the Ufa zemstvo, but the Little Russian troupe of Derkach came to Ufa, and Chaliapin joined it. Traveling with her led him to Tiflis, where for the first time he managed to take his voice seriously, thanks to the singer D.A. Usatov. Usatov not only approved of Chaliapin’s voice, but, due to the latter’s lack of financial resources, began giving him singing lessons for free and generally took a great part in it. He also arranged for Chaliapin to perform in the Tiflis opera of Ludwig-Forcatti and Lyubimov. Chaliapin lived in Tiflis for a whole year, performing the first bass parts in the opera.

In 1893 he moved to Moscow, and in 1894 to St. Petersburg, where he sang in Arcadia in Lentovsky's opera troupe, and in the winter of 1894-1895. - in the opera partnership at the Panaevsky Theater, in the Zazulin troupe. The beautiful voice of the aspiring artist and especially his expressive musical recitation in connection with his truthful acting attracted the attention of critics and the public to him.
In 1895, he was accepted by the directorate of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters into the opera troupe: he entered the stage of the Mariinsky Theater and successfully sang the roles of Mephistopheles (Faust) and Ruslan (Ruslan and Lyudmila). Chaliapin’s varied talent was also expressed in the comic opera “The Secret Marriage” by D. Cimarosa, but still did not receive due appreciation. It is reported that in the 1895-1896 season he “appeared quite rarely and, moreover, in parties that were not very suitable for him.” Famous philanthropist S.I. Mamontov, who at that time ran an opera house in Moscow, was the first to notice Chaliapin’s extraordinary talent and persuaded him to join his private troupe. Here, in 1896-1899, Chaliapin developed artistically and developed his stage talent, performing in a number of responsible roles. Thanks to his subtle understanding of Russian music in general and modern music in particular, he completely individually, but at the same time deeply truthfully created a number of significant images of Russian opera classics:
Ivan the Terrible in “Pskovianka” N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov; Varangian guest in his own “Sadko”; Salieri in his “Mozart and Salieri”; Miller in “Rusalka” by A.S. Dargomyzhsky; Ivan Susanin in “Life for the Tsar” by M.I. Glinka; Boris Godunov in opera of the same name M.P. Mussorgsky, Dosifey in his “Khovanshchina” and in many other operas.
At the same time, he worked hard on roles in foreign operas; for example, the role of Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust in his broadcast received amazingly bright, strong and original coverage. Over the years, Chaliapin has gained great fame.

Chaliapin was a soloist of the Russian Private Opera, created by S.I. Mamontov, for four seasons - from 1896 to 1899. In his autobiographical book “Mask and Soul,” Chaliapin characterizes these years of his creative life as the most important: “From Mamontov I received the repertoire that gave me the opportunity to develop all the main features of my artistic nature, my temperament.”

Since 1899, he again served in the Imperial Russian Opera in Moscow (Bolshoi Theater), where he enjoyed enormous success. He was highly praised in Milan, where he performed at the La Scala Theater in the title role of Mephistopheles A. Boito (1901, 10 performances). Chaliapin's tours in St. Petersburg on the Mariinsky stage constituted a kind of event in the St. Petersburg musical world.
During the revolution of 1905, he donated proceeds from his performances to the workers. His performances with folk songs (“Dubinushka” and others) sometimes turned into political demonstrations.
Since 1914 he has been performing in private opera companies of S.I. Zimina (Moscow), A.R. Aksarina (Petrograd).
In 1915, he made his film debut, the main role (Tsar Ivan the Terrible) in the historical film drama “Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible” (based on Lev Mei’s drama “The Pskov Woman”).

In 1917, in the production of G. Verdi’s opera “Don Carlos” in Moscow, he appeared not only as a soloist (the part of Philip), but also as a director. His next directorial experience was the opera “Rusalka” by A.S. Dargomyzhsky.

In 1918-1921 - artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater.
Since 1922, he has been on tour abroad, in particular in the USA, where his American impresario was Solomon Hurok. The singer went there with his second wife, Maria Valentinovna.

Chaliapin's long absence aroused suspicion and negative attitude in Soviet Russia; so, in 1926 V.V. Mayakovsky wrote in his “Letter to Gorky”:
Or live for you
how Chaliapin lives,
splashed with scented applause?
Come back
Now
such an artist
back
to Russian rubles -
I'll be the first to shout:
- Roll back,
People's Artist of the Republic!

In 1927, Chaliapin donated the proceeds from one of the concerts to the children of emigrants, which was presented on May 31, 1927 in the VSERABIS magazine by a certain VSERABIS employee S. Simon as support for the White Guards. This story is told in detail in Chaliapin’s autobiography “Mask and Soul”. On August 24, 1927, by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, he was deprived of the title of People's Artist and the right to return to the USSR; this was justified by the fact that he did not want to “return to Russia and serve the people whose title of artist was awarded to him” or, according to other sources, by the fact that he allegedly donated money to monarchist emigrants.

At the end of the summer of 1932, he played the main role in the film “Don Quixote” by the Austrian film director Georg Pabst, based on the novel of the same name by Cervantes. The film was shot in two languages ​​at once - English and French, with two casts, the music for the film was written by Jacques Ibert. Location shooting of the film took place near the city of Nice.
In 1935-1936, the singer went on his last tour to the Far East, giving 57 concerts in Manchuria, China and Japan. During the tour, his accompanist was Georges de Godzinsky. In the spring of 1937, he was diagnosed with leukemia, and on April 12, 1938, he died in Paris in the arms of his wife. He was buried in the Batignolles cemetery in Paris. In 1984, his son Fyodor Chaliapin Jr. achieved the reburial of his ashes in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

On June 10, 1991, 53 years after the death of Fyodor Chaliapin, the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR adopted Resolution No. 317: “To cancel the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of August 24, 1927 “On depriving F. I. Chaliapin of the title “People's Artist” as unfounded.”

Chaliapin was married twice, and from both marriages he had 9 children (one died in early age from appendicitis).
Fyodor Chaliapin met his first wife in Nizhny Novgorod, and they got married in 1898 in the church of the village of Gagino. This was the young Italian ballerina Iola Tornaghi (Iola Ignatievna Le Presti (after Tornaghi’s stage), died in 1965 at the age of 92), born in the city of Monza (near Milan). In total, Chaliapin had six children in this marriage: Igor (died at the age of 4), Boris, Fedor, Tatyana, Irina, Lydia. Fyodor and Tatyana were twins. Iola Tornaghi for a long time lived in Russia and only at the end of the 1950s, at the invitation of her son Fedor, she moved to Rome.
Already having a family, Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin became close to Maria Valentinovna Petzold (née Elukhen, in her first marriage - Petzold, 1882-1964), who had two children of her own from her first marriage. They have three daughters: Marfa (1910-2003), Marina (1912-2009) and Dasia (1921-1977). Shalyapin's daughter Marina (Marina Fedorovna Shalyapina-Freddy) lived longer than all his children and died at the age of 98.
In fact, Chaliapin had a second family. The first marriage was not dissolved, and the second was not registered and was considered invalid. It turned out that Chaliapin had one family in the old capital, and another in the new one: one family did not go to St. Petersburg, and the other did not go to Moscow. Officially, Maria Valentinovna’s marriage to Chaliapin was formalized in 1927 in Paris.

prizes and awards

1902 - Bukhara Order of the Golden Star, III degree.
1907 - Golden Cross of the Prussian Eagle.
1910 - title of Soloist of His Majesty (Russia).
1912 - title of Soloist of His Majesty the Italian King.
1913 - title of Soloist of His Majesty the King of England.
1914 - English Order for special services in the field of art.
1914 - Russian Order of Stanislav, III degree.
1925 - Commander of the Legion of Honor (France).