By Olga Fyodorova
“…Excuse me, any extra tickets to the Bolshoi?”
“No, I fear not. Frankly speaking, I don’t even know
what they are having there tonight. All I know is that it’s the third time
they are asking me for an extra ticket today…”
“Georgy Nelepp is singing in Sadko tonight…”
“I see… Small wonder there is such a fuss going on. I don’t think you have
any chance of getting in tonight because all these opera buffs flock in
from all around the city each time Nelepp sings Sadko…”
It looked as if Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had exactly Georgy Nelepp in mind
when he was writing the part of the legendary psaltery guzla-playing singer
and traveler. Tall and well-built, a romantic shock of curly hair rising
up above the chiseled features of his handsome face, Georgy Nelepp easily
filled the Bolshoi’s giant hall with his free flowing voice. What
seemed such an easy blending with the original character was in fact the
result of long and patient effort on the part of the singer…
“I spent so much time looking for the right gait, moves and behavior, Georgy
Nelepp later admitted. I wanted my Sadko to be brisk-mannered, energetic
and manly befitting the legendary seafarer, a daredevil with a purpose.
It was as if the image was growing with me…”
It was a free-flowing, majestic manner the singer used to render his character’s
epic nature, never once sacrificing a single lyrical undertone of Rimsky-Korsakov’s
score…
Georgy Nelepp started singing when he was still a kid – a pretty traditional
pastime in Ukraine where people sing their life away regardless of age.
He was 10 when World War One broke out and 14 when Russia was hit by a
civil war. A 15 year-old boy, he joined the Red Army and four years
later, was sent out to Petrograd, now St.Petersburg, to study military
topography there. The conservatory was just two blocks away from
the school and Georgy’s friends, who admired his voice so much, literally
forced him to talk to the conservatory’s director Alexander Glazunov.
Glazunov gave the young man a friendly welcome and asked him to sing something.
“You have a wonderful voice, the famous composer said after an hour-long
audition. “You’ll make a fine singer, I’m sure about that…”
Still in his second year at the conservatory, Nelepp was invited
to the Mariinsky Theater and in February 1929 he had his debut on the stage
of one of Russia’s most famous music theaters. The well-known critic Ivan
Sollertinsky was quick to appreciate the emerging new talent:
“Hats off to the Mariinsky for acquiring such a wonderful singer and actor,
he wrote in a rave review, Georgy Nelepp is a real Godsend to them and
should be treated accordingly…”
During his 15-year stint with the Mariinsky, Georgy Nelepp sang the lead
parts in operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Rossini and Verdi, always
working hard and quickly learning new parts. He loved modern repertoire
excelling in the portrayal of larger-than-life heroes…
Which was in especially high demand during the war years when patriotically
tinged operas made up the bulk of the Mariinsky repertoire…
In 1944 when the heady smell of a much-awaited victory was already in the
air, the Bolshoi Opera, already back in Moscow from evacuation, was auditioning
new singers to boost their lineup. Georgy Nelepp, already a well-established
name in the country, was invited to join in without any preliminary audition.
Which he did quickly establishing himself as one of their very best singers
but never looking down on anyone and working hard like he always did.
Conductor Arii Pazovsky recalled how he once asked Nelepp if he ever argued
with the conductors and producers during rehearsals.
“First of all I listen hard to them trying to figure out what they want,
Nelepp said. Then, I gradually start putting things together and
as soon as I have the general idea of what I’m going to do, then the real
arguing begins…”
“And how often do you have to retreat?”
“A la guerre come a la guerre, as they say… If you see you are wrong, there
is no harm in stepping back. Sometimes I fight tooth and nail before I
back off, you know…”
This is exactly what happened when he was rehearsing Florestan in Fidelio
by Ludwig van Beethoven. Conductor Alexander Melik-Pashayev who was
preparing the opera’s premiere at the Bolshoi was in seventh heaven
extolling Nelepp’s progress. The German conductor Herman Abernot who steered
the orchestra through one of Fidelio’s presentations in Moscow in October
1954, was equally ecstatic about Nelepp’s performance:
“Nelepp’s Florestan is one of the best I’ve ever heard and seen in my whole
life! With Galina Vishnevskaya singing Leonora, they made an absolutely
unforgettable duet…”
Galina Vishnevskaya, one of Nelepp’s all time stage favorites, thought
very highly of him as a singer but, like many of her colleagues, tried
to stay away from him in everyday life. In her book, Vishnevskaya
writes that after the truth about Stalin’s crimes finally came out in 1956
and the victims of Stalinist terror started coming back from the GULAG,
an elderly woman once came to the Bolshoi and said she wanted to have a
word with Georgy Nelepp. When he came up to the woman, she slapped
him in the face calling him a traitor. She said that Nelepp was one of
the most hard working secret police informants around, contributing to
the arrest of many innocent people…
In one of his “Little Tragedies” the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin
said that “Villainy and genius are two things that never go together” but
sometimes it seems that this is not necessarily true…
They say that people with a bad conscience never live long. Georgy Nelepp’s
heart stopped beating when he was only 53…
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