Perhaps the most famous Soviet singer, Fyodor Chaliapin became the idol of millions, and for countless thousands of followers, his voice became a real standard. Nowadays, many old audio recordings of his performances are digitized and cleaned of extraneous noise so that contemporaries can enjoy his inimitable singing. During his life, Chaliapin achieved loud recognition not only in Russia, but also in a number of other countries, and he is revered as one of best singers throughout the progressive world.
Facts from the biography of Chaliapin
- As a child, Fyodor Chaliapin did not even think that he would someday become a great singer. His father convinced his son that The best way to earn a living - not to sing songs, but to get a job, for example, as a janitor. Fortunately, young Fyodor did not listen to his father.
- The ancestors of Chaliapin had the surname "Shelepin", but over time it transformed and changed.
- In his youth, Fedor Chaliapin studied at a private school, from where he was expelled after some time. The reason for this incident was that the teacher caught him kissing a classmate.
- Chaliapin's first wife was the Italian ballerina Iola Tornaghi. He courted her for a very long time before she gave him consent to marriage.
- The parents of the great singer were ordinary peasants.
- Even before he became interested in singing, Chaliapin mastered the profession of a shoemaker, intending to earn his living from it.
- At the age of nine, young Chaliapin enrolled in a church choir - before that he was fascinated by choral singing.
- At the age of 12, Chaliapin first got into the theater - to the play "Russian Wedding". From that moment on, the theater drove him crazy and became his lifelong passion.
- The house in Moscow, which Chaliapin acquired in 1910, at one time survived Patriotic War 1812 and the fire set by the retreating troops of Kutuzov and devastated the city ().
- During his first ever exit to theater stage Chaliapin, who played a silent role, was so excited that he got entangled in his robe and fell down. He couldn't get up and crawled across the stage. The enraged director, according to Chaliapin's own recollections, kicked him away.
- Fyodor Chaliapin collected weapons. Old pistols, guns, spears and other examples hung on all the walls.
- Parents baptized Fedor the very next day after his birth. The child was so frail that his mother and father feared his imminent death.
- Once Fyodor Ivanovich hired a cab driver in Moscow. During the conversation, the peasant asked what Chaliapin was doing. - Yes, I sing. And I sing when I'm bored. What is your job?
- Once, in his youth, Fyodor Chaliapin auditioned for the choir with Maxim Gorky, who at that time was also not yet a writer. Surprisingly, preference was given to Gorky, and Chaliapin was refused ().
- In 1905, in St. Petersburg, Chaliapin started a new family, starting to live with the widow Maria Petzold and her two children. For another four years he lived in two houses, and the children from his first marriage, of whom there were five, did not suspect anything.
- Officially, Chaliapin's first marriage was not dissolved, so his second chosen one could not bear his last name.
- It was largely thanks to Chaliapin that caviar became popular in Europe. He liked to drink a glass of vodka and eat it with a caviar sandwich. Many admirers of Chaliapin's talent began to do the same.
- Once, during an American tour, Chaliapin had to pay meticulous reporters $ 10,000 so that they would not publicize the fact that he lives civil marriage with Maria Petzold, without divorcing his first wife.
- The famous Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was not a fan of Chaliapin's work - after hearing his performance, he stated that he sang too loudly.
- After the revolution, the Bolsheviks confiscated Chaliapin's house, car, and most of his savings.
- During the tour, Chaliapin visited many countries in Asia and Europe, as well as the USA ().
- The Soviet authorities punished the singer for charity. He donated the profits from one of the concerts to the children of the White Guards who emigrated after the revolution, for which he was forbidden to ever return to the USSR and deprived of all merits.
- Officially, Fyodor Chaliapin was rehabilitated only after the collapse of the Union, in 1991.
- One night, a criminal climbed into Chaliapin's dacha in Sochi. The artist drew a revolver and killed him with a shot in the heart. The attacker turned out to be a local beggar. There was a stick in his hands, but Chaliapin assured that in the dark he mistook it for a gun.
- During a tour of the United States, Chaliapin passed inspection at the New York customs. One of the fans standing in line shouted loudly: “It's Chaliapin! He has a golden throat! The customs officers took this compliment in their own way, and forced the singer to take an X-ray of his throat.
- Chaliapin was not only a great singer, but also a talented painter and sculptor. Many of his paintings and several sculptures have survived.
- The singer died in Paris, and only 46 years later, through the efforts of his son, the remains of Fyodor Chaliapin were returned to the USSR and reburied.
Interesting facts about Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin
Konstantin Korovin. Gallery of paintings and drawings of the artist - Portrait of F.I. Chaliapin. 1911
Do elders need to be obeyed?
Fyodor Chaliapin's father was definitely of opinion about his son's acting hobbies. He told him:
- You have to go to the janitors, well, to the janitors, and not to the theater. You have to be a janitor, and you will have a piece of bread ...
Do not sit in your sleigh
Fifteen-year-old Chaliapin turned to the management of the theater in Kazan with a request to listen to him and accept him into the choir. But due to a voice mutation at the audition, he sang extremely poorly. Instead of Chaliapin, they accepted some lanky nineteen-year-old guy, with a monstrous "okay" accent, into the choristers. Chaliapin remembered his first fiasco for the rest of his life, and he hated this lanky competitor for a long time. Years later in Nizhny Novgorod Chaliapin met Maxim Gorky, to whom he told about his first singing failure. Hearing the story, Gorky laughed:
- Dear Fedenka, it was me! True, I was soon expelled from the choir, because I had no voice at all.
Debut
The debut of Fyodor Ivanovich on the opera stage was very original. Chaliapin at that time was the main extra in the theater. He was entrusted with the wordless role of the cardinal, who was to solemnly proceed across the stage, accompanied by his retinue. Before going on stage for the first time in his life, Chaliapin was so worried that his legs and arms were trembling. He spent a long time explaining their duties to the clueless junior extras, secretly anticipating how the hall would gasp from their majestic procession.
- Follow me and do everything the same as me! - he ordered the retinue and went on stage. Barely taking a step, Chaliapin stepped on the edge of his long red mantle in excitement and collapsed right on the floor! The retinue accompanying the cardinal decided that ... it was necessary, and also fell! The main extra heroically tried to get to his feet, to get out of the wide mantle - it was useless. Floating in the robes of a cardinal, he crawled on all fours across the stage! And behind him, also trembling convulsively, the retinue crawled!
The audience laughed out loud! As soon as Fedor Ivanovich was backstage, the enraged director grabbed him and lowered him down the stairs, giving the future decoration of the Russian stage a good kick in the ass.
"Now I'm leaning..."
Chaliapin recalled with humor the peculiar method of "educating" the voice, which was used by his teacher D.A. Usatov. Hearing that his voice was beginning to weaken, he beat the student in the chest with a backhand and shouted:
- Lean on, damn you! Lean on!.
But Chaliapin did not understand what and on what he had to "rely" ...
- Only a long time later, he finally explained to me that it was necessary to rely on the sound of breathing, to concentrate it ... - Chaliapin said with a laugh, having already become a great singer.
Don't want to croak? fine!
Once Chaliapin was ill with "angina pectoris" and refused to sing in two performances. For this, the director of the theater fined Fyodor Ivanovich and argued for the imposition of a fine. in the following way:
- In our performances, many artists on the stage simply croak, why can't Chaliapin sing with the "toad"? He would fit right in with the choir...
Ostrich in a cage
In 1901, Chaliapin, as a soloist of the Bolshoi Theater, toured at the La Scala Theatre. He responded to his first foreign tour with an auto-epigram, successfully paraphrasing the poems of Lermontov and Griboyedov:
I'm here in Milan - an ostrich in a cage
(In Milan, ostriches are so rare);
Milan is going to watch
How a Russian ostrich will sing
And I sing and the sounds melt away
But bonnets are by no means in the air
Here, as in Russia, they don't quit.
Yes, I'm not talking about it!
Fedor Ivanovich Chaliapin has always been indignant at people who consider the work of an artist to be easy.
“They remind me,” the singer said, “one cab driver who once drove me around Moscow:
- And you, sir, what do you do? - asks.
- Yes, I sing.
- I'm not talking about that. I ask what are you doing? Sing - we all sing. And I sing when I get bored. I ask: what are you doing?
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10 facts about Fyodor Chaliapin
Fyodor Chaliapin was an artist known to the whole world: he performed on the most famous stages in different countries. We have collected 10 interesting facts about the singer's life. Read how Chaliapin failed his theatrical debut, signed a contract with La Scala, not knowing Italian, and violated court etiquette in the royal box of the London theater.
Baby Fyodor Shlyapkin
Fyodor Chaliapin changed his surname in infancy. The singer was born in a windy and frosty February, frail and sickly, nothing foreshadowed that a hero would later grow out of this crumb. Parents were worried: as if he would not leave this world unbaptized. It was very cool in the Epiphany Cathedral in Kazan, the priest who baptized the baby decided to conduct the ceremony in an abbreviated form, so as not to completely catch a cold and freeze the child. The church clerk was also in a hurry, who made a mistake in a hurry, writing in the church book “baby Fyodor Shlyapkin”, distorting the name of Chaliapin. In this form, several years ago, researchers of the singer's work found it in the archive.
Ilya Repin. Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin. 1882
Valentin Serov. Portrait of the artist F.I. Chaliapin. 1905. State Tretyakov Gallery
Leonid Pasternak. Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin. 1913
First teacher - regent
Chaliapin could not be called very a religious person, but his interest in singing came to him after he once accidentally went to an evening service in a church and heard the church choir. Most of all, he was struck by the boys - his peers, who sang from the notes. By chance, the regent of the church choir lived in the same house with the Chaliapin family, who checked the young Fyodor's hearing, made sure that everything was in order with this and his voice, and gave him a couple of lessons in musical literacy. After them, the future great bass learned to read music and soon got into the church choir. Here he had his first vocal performance.
Two days without food and water
Fyodor Chaliapin made his debut on the stage in the dramatic play "The Tramps", he was entrusted with the role of the gendarme Roger. More precisely, this debut did not take place. When Chaliapin stepped onto the stage of the Panaevsky Garden in Kazan, he fell into a stupor. From behind the scenes, he was prompted, then shouted - in vain. The curtain was lowered, the director tore off the costume from the unsuccessful actor. Chaliapin climbed over the fence, ran wherever his eyes looked. For two days, without food or water, he sat in a shed, afraid to go out. It seemed to him that the whole city knew about his shame. By the way, excitement and shyness, despite world fame, remained in his character.
"I'm madly in love with Tornagi!"
Chaliapin was quite an amorous person and went through several novels before his first marriage. But the Italian ballerina Iola Tornaghi, with whom he was in the same troupe, seriously turned his head. Fedor Ivanovich came up with a very witty way of explaining his love to her. He redid the lines in Gremin's aria in "Eugene Onegin" and instead of the "Onegin, I won't hide, I'm madly in love with Tatyana" sang "Onegin, I swear on the sword, I'm madly in love with Tornagi". It is incomprehensible how Iola, who did not know Russian at that time, could understand this, but consent to the marriage was received.
Fyodor Chaliapin. Photo: rufact.org
Fyodor Chaliapin. Photo: chtoby-pomnili.com
Fyodor Chaliapin and Iola Tornaghi. 1890-1900 years. Photo: aif.ru
The first pancake is lumpy
The first big part of Chaliapin on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater was Ruslan, the singer had only two weeks to prepare for the performance, which turned out to be insufficient. It was, if not a resounding failure, then a clear failure, after which Chaliapin was put an end to for some time and only small parties were entrusted to him. Chaliapin, although he was only 21 years old, reacted wisely to the situation and later often said that this situation “knocked his self-confidence out of him forever.”
Fabulous fee
When Fyodor Chaliapin received a telegram from La Scala with an offer to perform the part of Mephistopheles in Boito's opera on this stage, the singer at first thought it was a hoax. He even sent counter telegram to the theater with a request to duplicate the first one. And when I realized that everything was serious, they weren’t playing him, I was terribly scared. In order for the theater to withdraw its invitation, Chaliapin appointed a fabulous fee by the standards of those years, in the hope that the contract would not be signed. But the theater accepted the conditions of the Russian bass. Which, however, did not yet sing in Italian.
Fyodor Chaliapin in leading role in a production of Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov. Photo: chtoby-pomnili.com
Fyodor Chaliapin as Ivan the Terrible in a production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Maid of Pskov. 1898 Photo: chrono.ru
Fyodor Chaliapin as Prince Galitsky in the production of Alexander Borodin's opera "Prince Igor". Photo: chrono.ru
king and king
On tour in London with the troupe of Sergei Diaghilev, Chaliapin performed the part of Boris Godunov in the opera of the same name. One of the performances in the hall was attended by the King of England. He was amazed by the Russian bass and conveyed an invitation to the singer to enter the royal box. It was possible to enter the king's box only through the hall, which Chaliapin did right in the make-up and costume of Tsar Boris, who had just gone crazy. There was a pause in the royal box, the king was silent for some reason, then Chaliapin, who decided that the monarch was shy before the greatness of Russian music, spoke to him first. What violated etiquette. But the king was so moved that the singer got away with it.
Expensive watch from the emperor
Chaliapin was not at all shy in front of the mighty of the world this. Once Emperor Nicholas II sent him a gold watch as a gift. It seemed to Chaliapin that they were not expensive enough, those that were on his hand were much more expensive. And he sent this gift to the director of the Imperial Theaters, Telyakovsky, along with a letter in which he explained why he was doing this. Telyakovsky somehow managed to settle the incident, and Chaliapin received a new watch case from the emperor. This time the watch was very expensive. Konstantin Korovin. Portrait of the artist F.I. Chaliapin. 1911. GRM
Konstantin Korovin. Portrait of the artist F.I. Chaliapin. 1905. Private collection
Did not join the party
Chaliapin long years sympathized with the socialist movement and even somehow decided to join the party. Once, while walking around Capri with Gorky, Fedor Ivanovich asked the writer for advice: "Shouldn't I, Alexei Maksimovich, join the Social-Democratic Party?" Gorky looked at him sternly and replied: “You are not fit for this. Don't join any parties, be an artist, that's enough for you.". In the future, Chaliapin was very grateful to Gorky for this advice.
On February 13, Fyodor Chaliapin, the first people's artist of our country, celebrated his birthday. "AiF" has collected interesting facts from the life of a great artist.
Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin by Boris Kustodiev. 1921 © / RIA Novosti
“The great Chaliapin was a reflection of the split Russian reality: a tramp and an aristocrat, a family man and a “runner”, a wanderer, a frequenter of restaurants ...” - so about the world famous artist his teacher said Dmitry Usatov. Despite all life circumstances, Fyodor Chaliapin forever entered the world opera history.
Vasily Shkafer as Mozart and Fyodor Chaliapin as Salieri in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri. 1898 Photo: RIA Novosti
Devastating, inspiring, flammable. 3 stories about the Bolshoi Theater
Fedor Ivanovich Chaliapin was born on February 13 (old style - February 1), 1873 in Kazan in a peasant family of immigrants from the Vyatka province. They lived in poverty, his father served as a clerk in the Zemstvo council, often drank, raised his hand to his wife and children, over the years his addiction worsened.
Fedor studied at Vedernikova's private school, but he was expelled for kissing a classmate. Then there was the parish and vocational school, the latter he left due to a serious illness of his mother. On this state education Chaliapin ended. Even before the school, Fedor was assigned to godfather- learn shoemaking. “But fate did not judge me to be a shoemaker,” the singer recalled.
Once Fedor heard choral singing in the church, and it fascinated him. He asked to join the choir, and the regent Shcherbinin accepted it. The 9-year-old Chaliapin had an ear and a beautiful voice - a treble, and the regent taught him musical notation and paid a salary.
At the age of 12, Chaliapin first got into the theater - to the "Russian Wedding". From that moment on, the theater “drove Chaliapin crazy” and became his lifelong passion. Already in Parisian exile in 1932, he wrote: “Everything that I will remember and tell will ... be connected with my theater life. About people and phenomena ... I'm going to judge ... as an actor, from an actor's point of view ... ".
Actors of the opera performance "The Barber of Seville": V. Lossky, Karakash, Fyodor Chaliapin, A. Nezhdanova and Andrey Labinsky. 1913 Photo: RIA Novosti / Mikhail Ozersky
When the opera arrived in Kazan, she, according to Fyodor, amazed him. Chaliapin really wanted to look behind the scenes, and he made his way behind the stage. He was taken as an extra "for a nickel." The career of a great opera singer was still far away. Ahead were breaking voices, moving to Astrakhan, a hungry life and returning to Kazan.
The first solo performance of Chaliapin - the part of Zaretsky in the opera "Eugene Onegin" - took place at the end of March 1890. In September, as a chorister, he moves to Ufa, where he transforms into a soloist, replacing a sick artist. The debut of the 17-year-old Chaliapin in the opera "Pebbles" was appreciated and occasionally entrusted him with small parts. But the theatrical season ended, and Chaliapin again found himself without work and without money. He played passing roles, wandered, and in desperation even thought about suicide.
Russian singer Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin as Tsar Ivan the Terrible on a poster for the Châtelet Theater in Paris. 1909 Photo: RIA Novosti / Sverdlov
Friends helped, who advised me to take lessons from Dmitry Usatov- In the past, the artist of the imperial theaters. Usatov not only taught him the famous operas, but also taught him the basics of etiquette. He introduced the newcomer to the music circle, and soon to the Lyubimov Opera, already under contract. Having successfully played over 60 performances, Chaliapin went to Moscow, and then to St. Petersburg. After the successful role of Mephistopheles in Faust, Chaliapin was invited to audition at the Mariinsky Theater and enrolled in the troupe for three years. Chaliapin receives the part of Ruslan in the opera Glinka"Ruslan and Lyudmila", but critics wrote that Chaliapin sang "badly", and he remains without roles for a long time.
But Chaliapin meets a famous philanthropist Savva Mamontov, who offers him a place as a soloist of the Russian Private Opera. In 1896, the artist moved to Moscow and performed successfully for four seasons, improving his repertoire and skills.
Since 1899, Chaliapin has been in the troupe of the Imperial Russian Opera in Moscow and is a success with the public. He is received with enthusiasm at the La Scala theater in Milan - where Chaliapin performed in the image of Mephistopheles. The success was amazing, offers began to pour in from all over the world. Chaliapin conquers Paris and London with Diaghilev, Germany, America, South America, and becomes a world famous artist.
In 1918 Chaliapin becomes artistic director Mariinsky Theater(refusing at the same time from the position of artistic director in Bolshoi Theater) and receives the first title in Russia " People's Artist Republic".
Famous fugitives from the USSR: what did they exchange the iron embrace of the Motherland for?
Despite the fact that Chaliapin sympathized with the revolution from an early age, he and his family did not escape emigration. The new government confiscated the artist's house, car, bank savings. He tried to protect his family and the theater from attacks, met repeatedly with the leaders of the country, including Lenin and Stalin but that only helped temporarily.
In 1922, Chaliapin left Russia with his family, toured Europe and America. In 1927, the Council of People's Commissars deprives him of the title of People's Artist and the right to return to his homeland. According to one version, Chaliapin donated the proceeds from the concert to the children of emigrants, and in the USSR this gesture was regarded as support for the White Guards.
The Chaliapin family settled in Paris, and it was there that Opera singer will find his last resort. After touring in China, Japan, and America, Chaliapin returned to Paris in May 1937 already sick. Doctors diagnose - leukemia.
“I’m lying ... in bed ... reading ... and remembering the past: theaters, cities, hardships and successes ... How many roles I played! And it doesn't seem bad. Here's a Vyatka peasant for you ... ”, Chaliapin wrote in December 1937 of his daughter Irina.
Ilya Repin paints a portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin. 1914 Photo: RIA Novosti
The great artist died on April 12, 1938. Chaliapin was buried in Paris, and only in 1984 did his son Fyodor achieve the reburial of his father's ashes in Moscow, on Novodevichy cemetery. In 1991, 53 years after his death, Fyodor Chaliapin was returned the title of People's Artist.
Love story: Fyodor Chaliapin and Iola Tornaghi
Fyodor Chaliapin made an invaluable contribution to the development of opera art. His repertoire includes over 50 roles in classical operas, over 400 songs, romances and Russian folk songs. In Russia, Chaliapin became famous for the bass parts of Borisov Godunov, Ivan the Terrible, Mephistopheles. Not only his magnificent voice delighted the audience. Chaliapin paid great attention to the stage image of his heroes: he reincarnated as them on stage.
Personal life
Fyodor Chaliapin was married twice, and from both marriages he had 9 children. With his first wife - an Italian ballerina Iola Tornagi- the singer meets at the Mamontov Theater. In 1898 they got married, and in this marriage six children were born to Chaliapin, one of whom died in early age. After the revolution, Iola Tornaghi lived in Russia for a long time, and only at the end of the 50s she moved to Rome at the invitation of her son 
Fyodor Chaliapin at work on his sculptural self-portrait. 1912 Photo: RIA Novosti
Being married, in 1910 Fyodor Chaliapin became close to Maria Petzold who raised two children from her first marriage. The first marriage had not yet been dissolved, but in fact the singer had a second family in Petrograd. In this marriage, Chaliapin had three daughters, but the couple was able to formalize their relationship already in Paris in 1927. Fedor Chaliapin spent with Maria last years life.
Fedor Ivanovich Chaliapin received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for achievements and contributions to music.
Chaliapin was a remarkable draftsman and tried his hand at painting. Many of his works have survived, including "Self-portrait". He also tried his hand at sculpture. Performing in Ufa at the age of 17 as Stolnik in the opera Moniuszko"Pebbles" Chaliapin fell on stage - sat down past a chair. All his life from that moment he vigilantly watched the chairs on the stage. Lev Tolstoy after listening to Chaliapin's performance folk song"Nochenka" expressed his impressions: "He sings too loudly ...". BUT Semyon Budyonny after meeting Chaliapin in the carriage and drinking a bottle of champagne with him, he recalled: "The whole carriage seemed to shudder from his mighty bass."
Chaliapin collected weapons. Old pistols, shotguns, spears, mostly donated A.M. Gorky hung on his walls. The house committee either took away his collection, then, at the direction of the deputy chairman of the Cheka, returned 
Chaliapin began his artistic career when, at the age of fifteen, he turned to the directorate of the Kazan theater with a request to listen to him and accept him into the choir. But due to a voice mutation, he sang extremely poorly at the audition. Instead of Chaliapin, they accepted some lanky nineteen-year-old guy, with a monstrous "okay" accent, into the choristers.
Chaliapin remembered his first fiasco for the rest of his life, and hated his lanky competitor for a long time. Many years later, in Nizhny Novgorod, Chaliapin met Maxim Gorky and, among other things, spoke about his first singing failure.
Gorky laughed.
- Dear Fedenka, it was me! True, I was soon expelled from the choir, because I had no voice at all.
***
Chaliapin's debut on the opera stage was very memorable. Chaliapin at that time was the main extra in the theater. He was entrusted with the wordless role of the cardinal, who was to solemnly proceed across the stage, accompanied by his retinue. Before going on stage for the first time in his life, Chaliapin was so worried that his legs and arms were trembling. He spent a long time explaining their duties to the clueless junior extras, secretly anticipating how the hall would gasp from their majestic procession.
Follow me and do everything the same as me! he ordered his retinue and stepped onto the stage.
But as soon as he took a step, Chaliapin stepped on the edge of his long red mantle in excitement and collapsed right on the floor! The retinue accompanying the cardinal decided that this was the way it should be, and also fell! The main extra heroically tried to get to his feet, to get out of the wide mantle - it was useless. Floating in the robes of a cardinal, he crawled on all fours across the stage! And behind him, also trembling convulsively, the retinue crawled ...
The audience laughed out loud. As soon as Fedor Ivanovich was backstage, the enraged director grabbed him and lowered him down the stairs, giving the future decoration of the Russian stage a good kick in the ass.
***
Chaliapin had a secretary and assistant, Peter, who protected the singer from annoying journalists and theater critics.
During one of his trips around Europe, a well-known music critic came to the singer's hotel. The secretary met him.
"Fyodor Ivanovich is busy now," he said. I am ready to answer all your questions.
— What are Maestro Chaliapin's plans for the near future? asked the music critic.
- We are going to Milan, where we will sing at La Scala, then we will give a concert in London in honor of the English king, then we will go to Paris ...
“That's right, Pyotr,” Chaliapin's voice thundered from the next room. Just don't forget to take me with you!
***
Once, at the time of the revolution, Chaliapin came to his friend, the artist Korovin, and immediately complained:
— The devil knows what it is! I have been ordered to speak to the mounted sailors today. Tell me, for God's sake, what are horsemen?
“I don’t know what horse sailors are,” Korovin answered gloomily, “but you need to get out of here ...
***
During the revolution, Chaliapin's house was often searched at night. They were looking for "bourgeois values": diamonds and gold, but they did not disdain silver spoons and forks.
After one of these night raids, Chaliapin complained to Zinoviev:
- I understand - a revolution ... And, in essence, I am not against searches, but is it possible to search me at a time convenient for me, from eight to nineteen, for example?
***
Once an amateur singer came to Chaliapin and rather unceremoniously asked:
- Fedor Ivanovich, I need your costume for rent, in which you sang Mephistopheles. Don't worry, I'll pay you!
Chaliapin took a theatrical pose, took a breath of air and sang:
— Flea caftan?! Ha-ha-ha-ha!..
***
Once, the opera Don Carlos was playing at the Bolshoi Theatre. The party of King Philip was sung by Chaliapin, the Grand Inquisitor - Vasily Petrov.
It must be said that Petrov admired the genius of Chaliapin, and Chaliapin, in turn, highly appreciated Petrov's voice and talent.
Before the start of the third act, Petrov said to Chaliapin:
“But I’m going to sing you today, Fedya!”
- No, Vasya, don't oversing! Chaliapin replied.
- I'll drink!
- No, don't overeat!
The act has begun.
Petrov, who had a powerful voice, completed the phrase with a thunderous roar that drowned out the orchestra and filled the entire theater - from the stalls to the gallery.
In a fraction of a second, Chaliapin realized that this could no longer be blocked. And King Philip unexpectedly answered the words of the Grand Inquisitor ... in a whisper. He whispered his remark in absolute silence, and from these words, uttered with genius by Chaliapin, an ominous cold literally blew in the hall.
The success was complete, and the ovation lasted several minutes.
When the curtain closed, Chaliapin jokingly winked at Petrov:
— That's it! And you yell at the top of your lungs! ..
***
Among the artists, a dispute broke out about what art is. Chaliapin, having listened, imperceptibly withdrew into another room. Then he suddenly opened the door, stood on the threshold deathly pale, with disheveled hair, quivering lips, eyes full of horror, and shouted:
— Fire!
Panic arose, screams ... But Chaliapin suddenly laughed:
Do you now understand what art is?
***
Chaliapin was always indignant at people who consider the work of an artist to be easy.
“They remind me,” the singer said, “one cab driver who once drove me around Moscow:
- And you, sir, what do you do? he asks.
- Yes, I sing.
- I'm not talking about that. I ask what are you doing? Sing - we all sing. And I sing when I get bored. I ask: what are you doing?