By Olga Fyodorova
“June 1963. In Moscow the Bolshoi Theater is holding a contest to expand
its operatic lineup…”
“Tamara Sinyavskaya, it’s your turn now!”
“Let me take a look at her last name… Well… Born in Moscow in June 1943.
Are you telling me she’s not yet 20?!”
“Looks like it. Where did she study?”
“It’s written here she is still attending a music college at the Conservatory.
Heavens, I have never auditioned anyone this young before… What about sending
her off right now and forget about it?”
“No, let her sing, it’s never late to send her away, you know… She’s going
to sing the Habanera from Carmen, how about that?!”
“Habanera?! Are you serious?!”
Sinyavskaya’s singing was so good that they hired her on the spot… Initially
assigned to the so-called trainee lineup she began the season singing the
part of the Page in Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi.
“There are only two short phrases there, but I spent so much time and effort
to rehearse them as if I were going to sing Carmen or Eboli,” Tamara
Sinyavskaya recalls. “I could sing it even if someone woke me up in the
dead of night... But the moment I walked out on stage, I became so nervous
that I lost all control and sang those two phrases exactly twice as slow
as I was supposed to, much to the horror of the conductor and my partners…
Surprisingly, they never kicked me out and even gave me another part, then
another… The following year I was already singing Ratmir in Mikhail Glinka’s
Ruslan and Lyudmila, which is one of the hardest for a low mezzo or contralto
voice…”
Sinyavskaya’s first few years at the Bolshoi were the most difficult coinciding
with her studies at the institute of performing arts and participation
in international competitions. In 1968 she won the first prize in Sofia,
Bulgaria, the following year she triumphed at a very prestigious singers’
competition at Varvier, Switzerland, and in 1970 she won the gold medal
of the Tchaikovsky international competition in Moscow. That year
the jury gave out two top awards and the other one went to Yelena Obraztsova,
also from the Bolshoi Theater. From there the two have been working together,
with Obraztsova wowing the listeners primarily with her stage presence
and Sinyavskaya with the unbelievable beauty of her voice…
“I started out singing young boys but deep down in my soul I always dreamed
about women characters, so tender, feminine and loving,” Sinyavskaya said
in an interview. “I was real crazy about the part of Lyubasha in the Czar’s
Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. That’s what real passion is all
about! A beautiful, proud and abandoned woman is desperately looking for
a way to bring back her loved one. I still remember how hard I was working
on that part , I even rambled at times… Once I was down in the metro and,
all of a sudden, I hollered out loud: “No, it can’t be! You won’t leave
me!” People started whispering and the next moment I regained my senses…”
It’s amazing how a singer with such a mesmerizing voice never gained international
star status and only rarely performed abroad. One reason is that
Sinyavskaya is a typically Russian singer, her voice suiting just perfectly
the Russian repertoire. I’m not saying, of course, that she cannot sing
Carmen, Azuchena or any other European classical character, but she has
always been at her best singing Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky
and Prokofyev…
“Marfa in Khovanshchina by Mussorgsky is my best beloved,” Sinyavskaya
says. “First, because it suits my voice just perfectly which is something
we singers are always looking for. Marfa also rings a very personal bell
in me… I never really understood women who just go with the stream, you
know… Not Marfa, though, who is a strong woman standing tall for the Old
Church rite the authorities try to suppress. Weaker people come to her
seeking moral support from this woman, who knows what the future holds
for each of them…”
With nearly 30 operatic parts behind her, Tamara Sinyavskaya is equally
impeccable in chamber music, her captivatingly velvety timbre bringing
out the tenderness and burning desire of the old Russian love songs…
“There is some very alluring mystery in the Russian love song, she says,
just like in the midsummer night, in the starry skies and in love… It seems
to me that this is a mirror reflecting the enigmatic Russian soul…”
Just like in any other major theater, the Bolshoi has a secret life of
its own. Hard feelings, envy, jealousy, hearsay are a must feature of any
artistic community everywhere, but Sinyavskaya has always stayed aloof
of all that. Which is really amazing for someone married to Muslim Magomayev,
once this country’s top-selling pop singer. Tall, handsome and the heartthrob
of millions of women around the country, Magomayev eventually found much-needed
happiness marrying this charming and kind-hearted woman he says he simply
couldn’t but fall in love with…
Their marriage already tested by time and fame, Sinyavskaya and Magomayev
love each other for being so dedicated, sincere and talented people. They
often sing on stage together and even though these days they are not what
they used to be 10, 20 or 30 years ago, there is some very special charm
in their singing that sends people on their feet applauding and asking
for more…
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