Feodor Chaliapin - 'Son lo spirito' from 'Mefistofele' (1926 Live at Covent Garden!)

The great Russian basso Feodor Chaliapin sings "Son lo Spritio' from Boito's 'Mefistofele'. Recorded live at Covent Garden, London, on May 31st, 1926. Despite being a early live recording, the record sounds surprisingly vivid and loud - and this was even made few days BEFORE Nellie Melba's farewell, which sounds somewhat less vivid and less loud. One can simply visualize the whole stage while listening to this recording - especially the "sentiment d'existence" of Chaliapin.

Unfortunately, the shellac compound was very noisy; just another example of early 30s HMV crackles, so I had to filter out some of them by applying manual declicking job.



By the way, most of HMV pressings of Chaliapin records always spells his name as "Theodore Chaliafine" - I thought that was another example of 'being British', but I had a chance of seeing a photo of Chaliapin test pressing and it turns out Chaliapin signed his name on that record in that way! Surely in my knowledge "Feodor" is the Russian equivalent of "Peter", so what's the story? Anyone can solve mystery here?

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• Feodor
• Chaliapin
• Son
• io
• Spirito
• Mefistofele
• Boito
• 1926
• Covent
• Garden
• Live
• 78rpm
• Phonograph
• Gramophone

[SuperLuckydream]

Wonderfully sung and and thoughtfully acted performance. Thank you for posting!

[Lucius1958]

Actually, the Russian for 'Peter' is 'Pyotr'; 'Feodor' is in fact 'Theodore' (there being no 'th' in Russian, they use 'f' instead)....

But, indeed, a wonderful recording for 1926!