I said at the opening of Chaliapin/Part One that the release of this artist’s complete recorded output by Marston is the most significant event of the current opera season. And this may have struck some of my readers as odd and even self-contradictory, coming from someone who insists that opera as opera exists only in theatres, in the bringing-into-life of a work by in-the-flesh performers, in eye/ear simultaneity, in three dimensions, without cameras or mikes, and in real time. Secondary oralities, no matter how perfectly crafted, are not opera as opera, and neither is a document of any sort, for eye or ear. But I stand by both claims, and this is the reason: More than any other artists’ (all honor to Caruso, Callas, Lotte Lehmann—see the posts of Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 2017—and many others), Chaliapin’s records bring to the mind’s eye and ear the ideal of the singingactor assoluto in a form that is still recognizable to us, even after the generational adaptations of the intervening decades. That ideal is the one for which the greatest operatic artists have always striven, and the fact that it is kept before us in its entirety and in freshly restored reproduction is—if we give it our attention—more important than any of the glimmerings that from time to time penetrate the light grey mist of the contemporary opera scene.

At the end of our last episode, we took leave of the mighty Feodor as he concluded his October, 1907 recording session in Milan. Next stop on the phonographic trail: Paris, in June of 1908. In the interim, though, came his first voyage to America and to the Metropolitan, and we should take some note of that, inasmuch as it constituted perhaps the bitterest episode of his career. He made his debut on the second night of the 1907-08 season^(I) as the Boito Mefistofele, with Farrar as Margarita and Riccardo Martin as Faust. He stayed at the Met until late February, adding the Gounod Méphistophélès (with Caruso and Farrar), the Rossini Don Basilio (with Sembrich, Bonci, and Campanari), and Leporello (under Mahler, with Scotti and Bonci, and possibly the most formidable female lineup in the house history of Don Giovanni: Emma Eames, Johanna Gadski, and Farrar). Throughout this run, he experienced audience enthusiasm but, despite rather grudging acknowledgement of his physical and vocal gifts, a general critical distaste, bordering on revulsion, at what was perceived as his rough, peasantish vulgarity and bodily exhibitionism. His defenders were for the most part not among the most powerful New York critics, and Victor Borovsky reports in his Chaliapin biography that for some reason, only the more negative reports were translated for him (he as yet knew no English). He hated the Met’s shabby production values and its undervaluation of acting and dramatic preparation, and, like many others, found New York a major culture shock. (And though he doesn’t mention it in his memoirs, except for Mahler he had only weak house conductors to work with.) He sailed for Europe with little other than contempt for America and its leading opera company, and was not to return for thirteen years.

This week, instead of leading with more news about Opera as Opera developments (it’s going well), I’d like to pass along a little nudge about Will Crutchfield’s ongoing series of superbly annotated ancient-vocal-recording posts, “Will’s Record of the Week.” He will now be developing a mailing list for those who would like to subscribe and receive notifications. I strongly recommend.  Here’s the link.  

The most important event, artistically speaking, of the 2018-19 opera season so far has been the release of Feodor Chaliapin/The Complete Recordings on the Marston label. The 13-CD box contains every side and cylinder, published and unpublished, that Chaliapin is known to have recorded. In terms of sound restoration and pitch verification, Ward Marston has met, if not transcended, his own loving and scrupulous example, and in terms of packaging, presentation, and documentation has outdone even the finest of the earlier CD and LP hommages to this mightiest of singingacting exemplars.

In one of the essays included in the release’s handsome, copiously illustrated hardbound book, Michael Scott (in collated excerpts from his The Record of Singing) says: “Chaliapin ranks with Caruso and Maria Callas as one of the greatest singers and most potent and influential operatic artists of the twentieth century,” and he goes on to note that in one respect he surpassed the other two, for he achieved his dominance without the natural claim of higher-ranged voices on public attention and affection. Such evaluations are automatically open to dispute, and the accomplishments of these three artists (and of so many others–Ponselle? Melchior? Flagstad?, etc.) are so unalike in crucial ways as to foreclose any sensible comparison. Still, I might have picked Caruso and Callas for that purpose myself, at least with regard to influence, and I might have taken Scott’s observation one step further. Caruso was a very great singer, a musically instinctive and sophisticated interpreter, and an irresistible performing personality who eventually gained respect as an actor, but he was nothing like the pioneer of total singingacting transformation that Chaliapin became. Those two share common ground as contemporaries, as heroic, man-in-full males, and trailblazers in their respective vocalities. Callas, also heroic but two generations advanced into her art’s creative decline, was a trailblazer to the past. Her vocal prime, during which she was supreme in music of such different characteristics than the men’s, lasted less than a decade. Chaliapin’s endured for forty years, and ended only with his final illness.

My consideration of the Compleat Chaliapin will require two posts, and will proceed chronologically through the recorded oeuvre. Today’s will cover less of that ground than the next installment, because it will try to get some sort of handle on how Chaliapin became Chaliapin. That is perhaps the most remarkable of all the stories I know of the fulfillment of artistic potential. For although (such worthies as Thomas A. Edison and Malcolm Gladwell to the contrary notwithstanding) talent—and particularly talent at the exponential, “genius” level— is by no means overrated, it is also rare for any degree of talent to reach such full development, and against so formidable an array of obstacles as to make it appear that the obstacles were necessary to the development.