Oda Slobodskaya
Encyclopedia
Oda Slobodskaya 1888 - 1970 was a Russia
n born soprano
who later became a British citizen.
Her biographer, Maurice Leonard quotes Slobodskaya as having been born on 28 November 1888 in Vilno (now Vilnius
) near the Polish
border. She won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Knowing she had a good voice, in 1907 she applied for an audition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory
. Having no classical repertoire she sang the simple songs she had learned as a chlld. Despite this lack of sophistication, her vocal potential was immediately apparent. The Director, Glazunov
, and Natalya Iretskaya
(the most important Russian singing tutor and herself a pupil of Pauline Viardot Garcia) accepted her and awarded her a scholarship for nine years' study.
. She sang with the company for the next five years and performed many of the principal soprano parts of the Russian repertory as well as Sieglinde, Marguerite in Faust
, Elisabeth de Valois and Aida
. The revolution having broken out, she was ordered to join other singers on obligatory tours to factories and farms to entertain the workers and there met the bass Fyodor Chaliapin.
where she was soon invited to sing. Success there brought a call from Diaghilev to join him in Paris
to star in the premiere of Stravinsky’s opera Mavra
in 1922. Chaliapin then invited her to be principal soprano in the company he was forming to tour Western Europe
and she sang with him in Paris.
as star soloist with The Ukrainian
Chorus and while there she made a successful solo debut at Carnegie Hall
in New York
. But, as a displaced Russian living abroad when appreciation of the Russian repertoire was minimal, Slobodskaya had difficulty finding a good manager. To augment her classical career, she created a parallel identity in vaudeville
, singing operatic aria
s and good quality ballad
s under the pseudonym “Odali Careno". She remained in the USA for nearly seven years.
. Always performing to her own exacting standards, she had a great success, was immediately re-engaged, and was later twice invited to star in Royal Command Performance
s before King George V and Queen Mary
. She also re-establlshed her classical career, appearing at the Lyceum with Chaliapin as Natasha in Alexander Dargomïzhsky's
Rusalka
. In 1932, following her marriage to Captain Raymond Pelly, England became her permanent home.
debut as Fevronia in a concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, and as Venus in Tannhauser
with Sir Thomas Beecham. She again sang Fevroniya, in Italian
, at La Scala
, Milan
in 1933, and sang Palmyra in Thomas Beecham's production of Frederick Delius
's Koanga at Covent Garden in 1935. In 1936 she took part in a Russian season at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires
and sang Khivrya in Modest Moussorgsky's Fair at Sorochintsï at the Savoy and on an English tour in 1941 and subsequent years.
for concert performances of opera (notably as the heroine of Dmitry Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District) and for recitals of Russian song. A regular performer in the Promenade concerts
, she also recorded Russian art songs including many by pianist/composer Nicolas Medtner
. There followed wartime entertainment work and participation in the National Gallery
Concerts of Myra Hess
.
. She rekindled her concert career with some highly acclaimed recitals in the Wigmore Hall
. Saga records “rediscovered” her in the late 1950s and released two LP record
s. These records prompted Decca
to recall that they had several unissued Slobodskaya recordings from 1939-1945 which included the definitive performance of "Tatiana's letter Scene" from Eugene Onegin
. These were released in 1961 together with some newly recorded items. The Shostakovitch Six Spanish Songs, Kabalevsky Seven Nursery Rhymes, a fine set of Polish songs and an LP of classical Russian art and folk songs also followed.
colour and by a technical mastery which showed itself especially in supple and sustained legato
phrasing. She retained her vocal and interpretative powers to an advanced age.
Slobodskaya had a rich, strongly accented speaking voice and a characterful turn of phrase, and liked to give spoken introductions to her songs. This led to one of her last, great successes, in the speaking role of Narrator in "Peter and the Wolf
", recorded by Fidelio records in 1964.
She was a much admired Professor of Singing at the Royal College of Music
and the Guildhall School of Music, where her pupils included sopranos Patricia Reakes and Yvonne Fuller and contralto
s Anne Collins
and Annette Thompson, and, until her very last year, continued to give recitals of Russian song.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n born soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
who later became a British citizen.
Her biographer, Maurice Leonard quotes Slobodskaya as having been born on 28 November 1888 in Vilno (now Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
) near the Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
border. She won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Knowing she had a good voice, in 1907 she applied for an audition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory
Saint Petersburg Conservatory
The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory is a music school in Saint Petersburg. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members and 1,400 students.-History:...
. Having no classical repertoire she sang the simple songs she had learned as a chlld. Despite this lack of sophistication, her vocal potential was immediately apparent. The Director, Glazunov
Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...
, and Natalya Iretskaya
Natalia Iretskaya
Natalia Alexandrovna Iretskaya was a Russian singer and teacher of singing. Vocally, she is best described as a soprano.-Biography:She was born in 1845 and graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where studied with Henriette Nissen-Saloman . She also studied in Paris with Pauline Viardot...
(the most important Russian singing tutor and herself a pupil of Pauline Viardot Garcia) accepted her and awarded her a scholarship for nine years' study.
The Mariinsky Theatre
In 1916 she made her debut, as Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades the Mariinsky TheatreMariinsky Theatre
The Mariinsky Theatre is a historic theatre of opera and ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Opened in 1860, it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their premieres. The...
. She sang with the company for the next five years and performed many of the principal soprano parts of the Russian repertory as well as Sieglinde, Marguerite in Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
, Elisabeth de Valois and Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
. The revolution having broken out, she was ordered to join other singers on obligatory tours to factories and farms to entertain the workers and there met the bass Fyodor Chaliapin.
To Berlin
In 1921 she fled from Russia to BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
where she was soon invited to sing. Success there brought a call from Diaghilev to join him in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to star in the premiere of Stravinsky’s opera Mavra
Mavra
Mavra is a one-act opera buffa composed by Igor Stravinsky, and one of the earliest works of Stravinsky's 'neo-classical' period. The libretto of the opera, by Boris Kochno, is based on Aleksandr Pushkin's The Little House in Kolomna. Mavra is about 25 minutes long, and features two arias, a...
in 1922. Chaliapin then invited her to be principal soprano in the company he was forming to tour Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
and she sang with him in Paris.
To America
The impresario Rabinoff organised for her to tour AmericaUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as star soloist with The Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
Chorus and while there she made a successful solo debut at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. But, as a displaced Russian living abroad when appreciation of the Russian repertoire was minimal, Slobodskaya had difficulty finding a good manager. To augment her classical career, she created a parallel identity in vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, singing operatic aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
s and good quality ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
s under the pseudonym “Odali Careno". She remained in the USA for nearly seven years.
To England
In 1930 she was booked, as Odali Careno, for two weeks at the London PalladiumLondon Palladium
The London Palladium is a 2,286 seat West End theatre located off Oxford Street in the City of Westminster. From the roster of stars who have played there and many televised performances, it is arguably the most famous theatre in London and the United Kingdom, especially for musical variety...
. Always performing to her own exacting standards, she had a great success, was immediately re-engaged, and was later twice invited to star in Royal Command Performance
Royal Command Performance
For the annual Royal Variety Performance performed in Britain for the benefit of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, see Royal Variety Performance...
s before King George V and Queen Mary
Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V....
. She also re-establlshed her classical career, appearing at the Lyceum with Chaliapin as Natasha in Alexander Dargomïzhsky's
Alexander Dargomyzhsky
Alexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky was a 19th century Russian composer. He bridged the gap in Russian opera composition between Mikhail Glinka and the later generation of The Five and Tchaikovsky....
Rusalka
Rusalka (Dargomyzhsky)
Rusalka is an opera in four acts, six tableaux, by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, composed during 1848-1855. The Russian libretto was adapted by the composer from Pushkin's incomplete dramatic poem of the same name...
. In 1932, following her marriage to Captain Raymond Pelly, England became her permanent home.
Covent Garden debut
The same year (1932) she made her Covent GardenRoyal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
debut as Fevronia in a concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, and as Venus in Tannhauser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
with Sir Thomas Beecham. She again sang Fevroniya, in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, at La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
in 1933, and sang Palmyra in Thomas Beecham's production of Frederick Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
's Koanga at Covent Garden in 1935. In 1936 she took part in a Russian season at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
and sang Khivrya in Modest Moussorgsky's Fair at Sorochintsï at the Savoy and on an English tour in 1941 and subsequent years.
Work for the BBC
Throughout the 1930s she was much in demand by the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
for concert performances of opera (notably as the heroine of Dmitry Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District) and for recitals of Russian song. A regular performer in the Promenade concerts
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
, she also recorded Russian art songs including many by pianist/composer Nicolas Medtner
Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was a Russian composer and pianist.A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano...
. There followed wartime entertainment work and participation in the National Gallery
National gallery
The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...
Concerts of Myra Hess
Myra Hess
Dame Myra Hess DBE was a British pianist.She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the Gold Medal...
.
Records
After the war, during which her husband had died, Slobodskaya’s career was much reduced, though she made her only movie appearance as a Prima Donna in the 1951 film The Magic BoxThe Magic Box
The Magic Box is a fictional magic shop in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon. It is located in Sunnydale and was last owned and operated by Rupert Giles, and served as the primary headquarters of the Scooby Gang for seasons five and six.-Ownership history:The shop went...
. She rekindled her concert career with some highly acclaimed recitals in the Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall is a leading international recital venue that specialises in hosting performances of chamber music and is best known for classical recitals of piano, song and instrumental music. It is located at 36 Wigmore Street, London, UK and was built to provide London with a venue that was both...
. Saga records “rediscovered” her in the late 1950s and released two LP record
LP record
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
s. These records prompted Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
to recall that they had several unissued Slobodskaya recordings from 1939-1945 which included the definitive performance of "Tatiana's letter Scene" from Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
. These were released in 1961 together with some newly recorded items. The Shostakovitch Six Spanish Songs, Kabalevsky Seven Nursery Rhymes, a fine set of Polish songs and an LP of classical Russian art and folk songs also followed.
Tributes
Slobodskaya had a voice of immense purity, steadiness, agility and expressiveness with an almost incandescent quality above the stave. As a recitalist, she possessed the imagination and vivid temperament to convey to an audience ignorant of Russian the precise mood of each song, whether elegiac, boisterous, satirical or childlike. As her many recordings reveal, these rare interpretative powers were matched by a beautiful and ample voice of characteristically SlavonicSlavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
colour and by a technical mastery which showed itself especially in supple and sustained legato
Legato
In musical notation the Italian word legato indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, in transitioning from note to note, there should be no intervening silence...
phrasing. She retained her vocal and interpretative powers to an advanced age.
Slobodskaya had a rich, strongly accented speaking voice and a characterful turn of phrase, and liked to give spoken introductions to her songs. This led to one of her last, great successes, in the speaking role of Narrator in "Peter and the Wolf
Peter and the Wolf
Peter and the Wolf , Op. 67, is a composition written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936 in the USSR. It is a children's story , spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra....
", recorded by Fidelio records in 1964.
She was a much admired Professor of Singing at the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
and the Guildhall School of Music, where her pupils included sopranos Patricia Reakes and Yvonne Fuller and contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
s Anne Collins
Anne Collins (opera singer)
-Career:Collins was born in Durham. She studied at the Royal College of Music, London, first the cello and then vocal studies, where her teachers included Meriel St Clair and Oda Slobodskaya....
and Annette Thompson, and, until her very last year, continued to give recitals of Russian song.