Russia’s greatest bass at rest in Moscow

Press, 31 October 1984, Page 10

Russia’s greatest bass at rest in Moscow

NZPA-AP Moscow Sixty-two years after he left his homeland in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, the remains of Fyodor Chaliapin, the greatest bass in Russian opera history, were reburied with pomp and honour yesterday among heroes of Soviet life and culture. Chaliapin, who died in 1938, was buried beside his daughter, Irina, in a section of the Novodevichi Cemetery that includes two of his greatest contemporaries, Leonid Sobinov, the tenor, and Antonina Nezhdanova, the soprano. Soviet officials said that Chaliapin’s remains, which had been in a Paris cemetery, were taken to Moscow

at his children’s request. They declined to say why so much time had passed, but some of those who attended the funeral said that Chaliapin’s late son, Boris, had objected before his recent death to transferring his father’s remains. Chaliapin, who was considered to be the greatest performer of the role Boris Godunov, played in the world’s top opera houses at the turn of the century and was an important cultural figure in post-revolutionary Russia. He was the first person to be named as a “People’s Artist” and worked closely with Maxim Gorky, head of the early Soviet artistic world. But Chaliapin became disillusioned with the burgeoning cultural estab-

lishment, and never returned from a European tour in 1922.