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.