By Olga Fyodorova
On a warm sunny day in 1936, a heavily built young man sits squatting behind
a pile of crates amid the rough and tumble of portside activity in Odessa,
humming something and scribbling down in his notebook. It was where
a boisterous young girl dispatcher finds him:
“Here you are, Alex! A half an hour from now I want you to fetch your boys
and haul these boxes onto a barge moored at Quay N. 12…”
“All right, all right. I still have this half hour, don’t I?”
“Yeah… relax, take your time…
“I’ve got no time to relax, I’m preparing for my graduation exams…”
“Where?”
“The Conservatory, singer’s department. I’m going to be a singer. Five
years down, I only have one last exam and it’ll be all over…”
“Gee, I never thought you were a musician, seeing you hauling sacks and
crates here every day! Is it good for a would-be singer to be a hauler,
by the way?”
“Never thought about that… No, I don’t think it’s a problem. You know how
strong I am. My dad and grand dad all worked here. We are all strongmen
in the family, you know… It’s good working all day on the seashore, with
all these seagulls flying over your head…”
“But soon you will have to leave here. You will get a diploma, put on a
tux and start singing on stage… And I’ll be sitting in the audience and
say: I know this guy. He is Alexei Krivchenya, he once used to haul stuff
around at the port…”
“Then why don’t you come to the concert tomorrow, I will be singing there…”
Alexei Krivchenya was 26 when his life turned all around and he traded
the job of a portside hauler to one of a lead singer with the local Philharmonic
society. From then on he only came to the port to sing folk songs
and old Russian love songs much to the satisfaction of his former colleagues
who admired his voice and his new status…
Not quite happy about his work with the Philharmonic society and eager
to flesh out his longtime dreams of an operatic career, Alexei never thought
twice when they offered him a debut at an opera company in a small Ukrainian
town, even though it mean saying goodbye to his family and the sea which
he loved so much…
Alexei’s richly textured voice was not lost on the operatic community and
a year later he was invited to join the opera company in Ukraine’s economic
and cultural hub Dnepropetrovsk. There he premiered singing Farlaf from
Mikhail Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila.
Alexei Krivchenya definitely knew the ropes when it came to singing such
colorful characters and his mastery immediately won him public and critical
acclaim.
“The young singer Alexei Krivchenya proved himself as a very convincing
actor. His Farlaf is absolutely hilarious, the audience just couldn’t wait
to see him coming out again, and they even seemed to have forgotten about
the main characters,” went one of the many rave accounts in the local press.
When the German Nazis attacked in June 1941 and started rolling towards
Moscow, the company was moved to Siberia. When, three years later, they
were packing up to return, the Siberians asked Alexei to stay on and join
the new opera they were opening in Novosibirsk. He agreed and, experienced
and driven, quickly established himself singing Boris Godunov, Mephistopheles,
Khan Konchak, Ivan Susanin and more than a dozen other leading parts during
his five-year stint there…
Word about the outstanding bass raising eyebrows in Novosibirsk quickly
reached Moscow and even though the Bolshoi already boasted a whole constellation
of first-class basses, they still sent out an invitation. Alexei Krivchenya
quickly found his niche in the so-called “character roles” winning kudos
for his premiere performance of Ivan Khovansky in Modest Mussorgsky
opera Khovanshchina. Alexei Krivchenya sang his part with a superhuman
force that literally pressed the mesmerized audience against their seats….
Many other fine singers had already tried their luck singing Ivan Khovansky’s
part, but none of them had ever managed to reach the dramatic pitch Krivchenya
did… He helped people realize why Mussorgsky called his opera the way he
did… The strong, dashing and power-hungry Prince became the focal point
of the whole opera…
Alexei Krivchenya’s rendition of Ivan Khovansky, which won him the much-coveted
Stalin Prize in 1951, was absolutely exemplary inspiring a whole generation
of young singers.
He spent all his life working and painstakingly perfecting this and other
parts. “His each performance was absolutely wonderful,” said the Bolshoi’s
artistic director Boris Pokrovsky. “He always found something to add from
the wealth of personal recollections, books he had read and films and plays
he had seen. He was especially attentive to detail using his rich
fantasy to change the posture, gesture, the turn of the head immediately
making the whole scene look fresh and different…”
Alexei Krivchenya kept working until the very last months of his life.
After quitting the Bolshoi, he kept singing in concerts. Unlike so many
other singers, he added previously unsung songs to his regular repertoire.
His big-time class made the young singers envious of the larger than life
talent of this great master…
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