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…”Sobinov! Sobinov!!… It looks like the fellow is not going to turn up at all. They say this young lawyer has a good voice…” Sobinov could hear them calling out his name... He had been around since morning waiting for the audition. Now, as they were calling out his name, he was just sitting there in the half-lit hall, scared out of his wits and unable to move… That night he was given a sound thrashing by his friends and teachers at home, and, the following morning Sobinov was back at the Bolshoi again and this time he finally forced himself to face the jury… “His voice may not be very strong, but his upper register sounds just fine…” one of the jurymen said. “Well, there’s nothing special about him, but we’re short of tenors here… Why don’t we just sign him up for the time being and see what happens? What’s his name?” “Sobinov. Leonid Sobinov.” Leonid Sobinov was born on June 7, 1872, into a large merchant family in Yaroslavl. Graduating with honors from Moscow University, he spent some time working as a lawyer while, simultaneously, attending the singers’ department of the Moscow Philharmonic Music School. In 1897 Sobinov joined the Bolshoi company where he performed for a staggering 36 years. After the 1917 socialist revolution, he became the Bolshoi’s first democratically elected director. Boasting an extensive repertory of 42 opera parts and more than 250 old Russian love songs, Sobinov worked real hard sometimes giving as many as 40 performances at the Bolshoi and up to 50 concerts in a single year donating most of the concert proceeds to help money-strapped students. Besides his very busy touring schedule here in Russia, Sobinov also performed extensively in Italy, Spain, Germany and France. He was the darling of Moscow’s opera-going public and could often be seen carried out on his fans’ outstretched arms after performances. Sobinov was equally adored by the Bolshoi’s technical personnel. When he was marking 35 years of his work there, the workers presented him a lyre crafted from the disused stage-floor planks. On April 13, 1898 Leonid Sobinov was singing, for the first time, Lensky’s part in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Evgeny Onegin opera… “My easy, lyrical singing differed starkly from the powerful dramatic tenors who had traditionally performed Lensky’s part before me,” Sobinov recalled. “But I thought that all that powerful singing was not what one would expect from a daydreaming 17 year-old poet. That’s why I was trying more to reveal the tender, loving, side of his soul… “Always rapturous, his jet-black curls streaming down to his shoulders” - that how Alexander Pushkin pictured Lensky in his timeless novel in verse. Tchaikovsky had pretty much the same idea, but things can turn out very different on stage… They put a weird-looking red wig on me with the hair cut pretty short,” Sobinov recalled. “Are you crazy? He had long curly hair, didn’t he?” I fumed. The make-up man sternly advised me to stick to the tradition saying it was an opera, not a book. I then headed right to the director only to be told that the thing looked alright. Some smart Alec said why don’t I throw in a pair of red side-burns. The make-up man immediately obliged. Looking into the mirror I nearly burst into tears… There was some cutthroat staring back at me, an Impostor, anyone but Lensky…” Only after endearing himself to the Moscow audience, did Sobinov finally manage to present his own vision of the character, which was increasingly becoming part and parcel of his own self… Unfortunately, we don’t know how many times Sobinov sang Lensky’s part. All we know is that the last time he did it was in 1933. It was the last performance by the great singer who will forever be remembered as the best Lensky we have ever seen and heard on stage… Italy has always been a Mecca for aspiring tenors. Leonid Sobinov first arrived there in 1900 and immediately went to Mazzolli, then one of the best teachers of bel canto around. After a couple of lessons, Mazzolli said: “You’ve got it all, young man, a well-modulated voice and, above all, a pretty good vocal training. All you need is to learn several popular operas in Italian.” Sobinov heeded his teacher’s advice and on December 21, 1904 he made his debut at Milan’s venerable La Scala Theater singing Ernesto’s part in the opera Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti… “The success grew with every new scene,” raved the local newspapers. “The Russian tenor has a literally “golden” voice with that metallic luster, so expressive and free flowing. Sobinov’s rendition of Ernesto was so irresistibly charming that the audience demanded an encore…” Sobinov took up Don Pasquale one more time in 1934, shortly before his death when, already retired, he teamed up with the great Konstantin Stanislavsky producing the opera at a junior opera studio in Moscow which he led. Sobinov had a lot to tell the aspiring singers… …Sobinov took up Lohengrin’s part in Richard Wagner’s opera of the same name when he was already a mature 36 years old. He was at the very peak of his fame, idolized in Russia and already a well-established name in Madrid, Berlin, London and Monte Carlo. To sing Lohengrin’s part the way it was supposed to takes a lot of stamina and a voice that really projects to cut through the dense orchestration. At 36, Sobinov’s voice had all it possibly needed to meet the challenge while, at the same time, retaining its lyrical warmth and tenderness… In his interpretation of Lohengrin’s image, Sobinov departed from the character’s inherently Teutonic heroism underscoring instead the more romantic side of the Graal’s messenger. He also got rid of the traditional armor-plated outfit replacing it with a streaming, lightweight attire. “What a heavenly sight! What a heavenly voice! As I conducted, I felt a tear running down my face…” recalled Arthur Nikish who steered the orchestra through the opera’s first night performance at the Bolshoi. “None of the many Lohengrins I had seen before ever made me feel so poetically enchanted like the one I saw that night…” Leonid Sobinov’s performance of Lohengrin was so impeccably perfect that it ultimately prompted even the German tenors to alter their traditionalist view of the classical character. Sobinov offered a veritably textbook rendition, which went down in operatic history presenting Lohengrin as a romantic the knight always was… A survivor of three wars and as many revolutions and the
proud recipient of Russia’s highest awards, Leonid Sobinov died of cardiac
arrest on October 14, 1934. He was 62… There is a white marble swan on
his tombstone – the one which accompanied Graal’s messenger during his
worldly travels…
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