Feodor Chaliapin was one of the greatest opera singers of all time. He was born in Kazan in Russia in 1873, the son of a peasant. He had an unhappy
childhood with a domineering and drunken father. He left home at 16 and joined a provincial opera company where he lived in poverty, going for days
without food.
Chaliapin was largely a self-taught singer. He never attended music
school and learned through performing
with provincial Russian opera companies.
What made him different from most singers of his time
was that he applied psychological
techniques to operatic performance.
He was a perfectionist in his make-up and costuming. Stanislavsky was
greatly impressed by the way Chaliapin fused
all the elements of performance into a powerful whole.
Chaliapin sang in Europe from 1901, but it was not until after 1908 when Diaghilev arranged
Russian opera seasons in Paris and London that he was heard singing the great Russian operas, which were unknown in Europe. Such was his power as
the dying Boris Godunov that a London critic declared he could see the hairs of the men in the stalls bristling.
Chaliapin's voice was of extraordinary depth, richness and sheer magnitude. Mary Ellis, who sang opposite him in New York, remembers his voice
as being like a huge church bell which literally shook her with its vibrations. ‘Immense' summed him up – in voice, personality,
charm, living and size. He was a huge bear of a man, standing well over six feet. His costume for the coronation scene in Boris Godunov is now the
Theatre Museum and is extraordinarily heavy, taking at least two people to lift. It is almost impossible to imagine how anyone could have sung wearing
such a heavy costume under the heat of the stage lights.
Chaliapin remained
in Russia during the revolution but in 1921 he went into exile
and died in Paris in 1938.
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