27 Facts About Feodor Chaliapin

The fact that Feodor Chaliapin is far and away the best remembered of this magnificent quartet of rival basses is a testament to the power of his personality, the acuteness of his musical interpretations, and the vividness of his performances.

Feodor Chaliapin himself spelled his surname, French-style, Chaliapine in the West, and his name even appeared on early His Master's Voice 78s as Theodore Chaliapine.

Feodor Chaliapin was born into a peasant family on 1 February, 1873 in Kazan, in the wing of merchant Lisitzin's house on Rybnoryadskaya Street 10.

Feodor Chaliapin's godparents were his neighbors: the shoemaker Nikolay Tonkov and Ludmila Kharitonova, a 12-year-old girl.

The dwelling was expensive for his father, Ivan Yakovlevich, who served as a clerk in the Zemskaya Uprava, and in 1878 the Feodor Chaliapin family moved to the village of Ametyevo behind the area of Sukonnaya Sloboda, and settled in a small house.

Feodor Chaliapin began his career at Tbilisi and at the Imperial Opera in Saint Petersburg in 1894.

Feodor Chaliapin was then invited to sing at the Mamontov Private Opera ; he first appeared there as Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust, in which role he achieved considerable success.

At Mamontov Feodor Chaliapin met Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was serving as an assistant conductor there and with whom he remained friends for life.

Rachmaninoff taught him much about musicianship, including how to analyze a music score, and insisted that Feodor Chaliapin learn not only his own roles but all the other roles in the operas in which he was scheduled to appear.

Feodor Chaliapin returned the favor by showing Rachmaninoff how he built each of his interpretations around a culminating moment or "point".

In 1913 Feodor Chaliapin was introduced to London and Paris by the brilliant entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev, at which point he began giving well-received solo recitals in which he sang traditional Russian folk-songs as well as more serious fare.

Feodor Chaliapin toured Australia in 1926, giving a series of recitals which were highly acclaimed.

Feodor Chaliapin initially moved to Finland and later lived in France.

Feodor Chaliapin was renowned for his larger-than-life carousing during this period, but he never sacrificed his dedication to his art.

Feodor Chaliapin is remembered for his interpretations of Ivan the Terrible in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov and Salieri in Mozart and Salieri, Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust, Don Quixote in Massenet's Don Quichotte, and King Philip in Verdi's Don Carlos.

Feodor Chaliapin starred in all three versions, each of which used the same script, sets, and costumes, but different supporting casts.

In 1932, Feodor Chaliapin published a memoir, Man and Mask: Forty Years in the Life of a Singer.

Feodor Chaliapin lived in Paris, at 22 Avenue d'Eylau, where he died of leukemia.

Feodor Chaliapin owned a beautiful villa on the Sainte-Barbe hill in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, overlooking the Bay of Biscay.

Feodor Chaliapin met his first wife, Italian ballerina Iola Tornaghi, in Nizhny Novgorod.

Feodor Chaliapin had three daughters with Chaliapin: Marfa, Marina, and Dasya.

Feodor Chaliapin had his portrait painted a number of times by the Russian artist Konstantin Korovin.

Feodor Chaliapin had already begun writing his autobiography long before, in the Crimea.

Gorky, who was his intimate friend and was then living in Capri, persuaded Feodor Chaliapin to stay with him there and with the help of a secretary a great deal of information was taken down which Gorky fashioned into a long manuscript, published in Russia in 1917 as a series of articles in the journal Letopis.

Meanwhile, Feodor Chaliapin attempted to sell it to an American publisher, who refused it on learning that it had been published in Russian.

Feodor Chaliapin possessed a high-lying bass voice with an unmistakable timbre which recorded clearly.

Feodor Chaliapin cut a prolific number of discs for the Gramophone Company, beginning in Russia with acoustical recordings made at the dawn of the 20th Century, and continuing through the early electrical era.