6 vintage postcard photographs of the famed Russian bass in various operatic roles by prominent German-Russian photographers including Carl Andreyevich Fischer (1859-after 1923) and Richard Thiele (1843-1911)
Operatic roles and photographers' information printed in Cyrillic to lower margin.
1) Full-length portrait as Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust by Thiele, Moscow.
2) Three-quarter-length portrait as Dosifey in Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina by K.A. Fischer, St. Petersburg.
3) Three-quarter-length portrait as Prince Vyazminsky in Tchaikovsky's Oprichnik by V. Chekhovsky, Moscow.
4) Full-length portrait as Holofernes in Serov's Judith at the State Theatre. A. Bystrov., [?Petrograd]. Dated "March 7, 1919" in blue-green ink to verso.
5) Bust-length portrait in the title role of Rimsky-Korsakov's Ivan the Terrible (Pskovityanka; The Maid of Pskov). Éditions Gendre, France. Some abrasion and remnants of tape adhesive to upper edge of verso.
6) Large postcard with a reproduction of G. Verelsky's 1921 pencil and crayon portrait of Chaliapin.
Slight to moderate wear, browning, foxing, staining, bumping, and minor annotations in pencil.
Chaliapin "was widely-considered the greatest singing actor of his day... He was a perfectionist as far as his own make-up, costuming and musical and dramatic preparation were concerned, and untiringly attentive to the staging of the operas he appeared in. Those who worked with him or who knew him off stage testify to his almost superhuman vital force, warmth and fierce intolerance of artistic mediocrity." Harold Barnes and Alan Blythe in Grove Music Online.
Item #24621
Price: $85.00 other currencies