Feodor Chaliapin

as Nilakantha in "Lakme" Delibes

FEODOR IVANOVICH CHALIAPIN
(February 13 ,1873 – April 12, 1938)
Russian Bass

Largely self-taught, he began his career at Tbilisi and the Imperial Opera, St. Petersburg in 1894. He was then invited to sing at the Mamontov Private Opera (1896–1899); his first role there was as Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust,
At Mamontov he also 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 Chaliapin learn not only his own roles but also all the other roles in the operas in which he was slated to appear. With Rachmaninoff he learned the title role of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which became his signature character , On the strength of his Mamontov appearances, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow engaged Chaliapin, where he appeared regularly from 1899 until 1914. During the First World War, Chaliapin also appeared regularly at the Zimin Private Opera in Moscow. In addition, from 1901, Chaliapin began touring in the West, making a sensational debut at La Scala that year as the devil in a production of Boito's Mefistofele, under the baton of one of the 20th century's most dynamic opera conductors, Arturo Toscanini
Chaliapin's last stage performance took place at the Monte Carlo Opera in 1937, as Boris. He died the following year of leukemia, aged 65, in Paris, where he was interred