By Olga Fyodorova
…On June 3, 1985 the Bolshoi was offering their umpteenth presentation
of Tchaikovsky’s Yevgeny Onegin opera. Even though the cast featured the
very best singers the Bolshoi could offer, the audience just couldn’t wait
for the final act where the part of General Gremin was to be sung by the
formidable Mark Reizen who was turning 90 years old that night …
Tall, elegant and handsome as ever, despite his almost unbelievable age,
Reizen was absolutely irresistible in uniform…
Out of stage he was equally larger than life, a towering figure whose regal
carriage never betrayed his humble beginnings as a son of a struggling
coalminer who, as a 19-year-old young man went to the frontlines and spent
a whole three years there awarded a St.George’s Cross for his valiant service
to the nation. Three years later, seriously wounded and contused,
he was decommissioned with a slim chance of survival but lived another
70 years winning every imaginable Soviet decoration.
Mark Reizen’s first brush with music came when he, then a technology
student, was asked by a friend to keep him company during entrance examinations
to the local Conservatory. Reizen obliged and it just so happened
that his friend flunked the exam and Mark was admitted, even without documents.
“I need none of this!” he argued, “Am I going to be a singer or something,
after all these years of fighting at the frontlines?”
And still, his voice finally had the upper hand forcing him to quit the
Technology Institute just a few months before graduation and enter the
Conservatory. Still a student there, he became a lead operatic singer in
Kharkov.
Three years later Mark Reizen was already in Leningrad singing at the former
Mariinsky Theater. He was awed by the beauty of the Northern Venice
as many called Russia’s second capital, its magnificent palaces, museums
and theaters. The very hall of the Mariinsky Theater, giant and shining
with gold, was absolutely mind-boggling. Leningrad was truly a dream city
he had always desired with all his heart…
Once he was invited to sing at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and saw Josef
Stalin sitting in the box, right next to the stage. During the interval
he was summoned to meet the dictator.
“I like your voice very much and from this day on you are singing in the
Bolshoi,” Stalin said point blank.
Surprised, Reizen mumbled excuses saying that he had an apartment in Leningrad
and that his family also lived there…
“Tomorrow they will give you an apartment here in Moscow and you
can move in there with your family…” Stalin parried.
The following day Reizen was shown his new residence, which, in fact, was
a sprawling mansion whose size literally flabbergasted the young singer.
Reizen why don’t they give him a smaller place and settled in a two-room
flat, which he eventually traded for the biggest one he could possibly
get in the Soviet Union.
Reizen had a love-hate relationship with Stalin. A music buff, Stalin appreciated
the singer’s beautiful and powerful voice but he never got over his deep-seated
dislike for Jews. The dictator believed that a person with a Jewish
name should not play Russian national heroes. That’s why Reizen did not
take part in the first night performance of Mikhail Glinka’s Ivan
Susanin and Mussorgsky’s Khovanschina and was only allowed to join in at
a later date. Reizen’s larger than life talent immediately put the
rest on the back burner though and Stalin eventually was forced to bestow
on him the country’s highest awards, including three Stalin prizes.
Mark Reizen was hailed as one of the best performers of Boris Godunov in
Modest Mussorgsky’s opera of the same name and the regal gait he mustered
so well enacting the 16th century Russian Czar eventually became part and
parcel of his inner self.
Buoyed by his nationwide success, Reizen was now looking down on his colleagues,
producers and conductors. People simply feared him, and with pretty good
reason too, because the singer was now a pal of the all-powerful Culture
Minister and was rumored to have had a hand in the firing of the Bolshoi’s
conductor he didn’t like.
Reizen was not an easy man to get along with, hating familiarity and despising
lickspittles. The young conductor Boris Pokrovsky somehow managed
to find a key to the maestro’s heart making him work as hard as he possibly
could. The effort stood Reizen in very good stead though, resulting
in a veritable constellation of excellent productions, including the role
of the murderous Czar Boris…
Just like most other Soviet artists, Mark Reizen
rarely traveled abroad. Once, years before, he toured several European
countries creating a big stir in London and sending people on their feet
in Monte Carlo. After one such performance there he dropped by a local
casino and lost everything. He never ever gambled again…
The next time he left Russia was a whole 20 years later. The aging bass
created a furor with a series of sold-out performances in Eastern
Europe.
The human voice is one of the biggest mysteries one can think of. Only
a chosen few enjoy the God-given ability to sing beautifully and one can
only wonder why some singers see their voice dying out after 15 or 20 years
of hard work while others keep singing with youthful ease and vigor after
a whole fifty years of regular stage appearances.
Treasured as he did his priceless vocal chords, Mark Reizen still realized
one day that his voice was beginning to crack. He immediately cut back
on performances and consulted with the best doctors around but the crack
was still there…
Reizen quit the Bolshoi and started teaching at the conservatory but quickly
realized that teaching was definitely not his cup of tea. Little by little,
he started singing again and even learned some new arias. One day, listening
to a recording he had just made, he was surprised to see that the crack
was gone and his voice sounded just the way it did years ago. Reizen recorded
a couple of old Russian love songs for the radio and was pretty happy with
the result. Shortly after, he recorded a whole LP of such songs and,
five years later, another one. People just couldn’t believe that Reizen
was an 80 year-old man now!
At 90, Mark Reizen came out for the last time on the stage of the Bolshoi
Theater where he had sung all the leading bass parts. That night his General
Gremin sang once again that “All ages are to love submissive…”
He died just three years before marking his centennial birthday…
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