Sudak and Novy Svit, small resort towns in the Crimea, hosted the third Chaliapin Opera Festival, unique in form and on an unprecedented scale.
Our insane world, dominated by popular culture, sometimes registers events that inspire hope, making one believe that the situation is not that bad after all. Strolling along the shore in Sudak, deafened by music (not even pop but that “prison folklore” with four-letter words serving for lyrics, and this on a beach packed with children) many festival participants and vacationers visiting cafes and restaurants begged the management to turn off that dreadful music, for only previously they had attended a concert of classical music. Naturally, the organizers of the festival were far from thinking that after it everybody would stop listening to that popular stuff and switch to classics. Yet the very precedent of creating a festival of classic music at a resort is worth a great deal. After all, children, and even sometimes their parents, attending its actions were able to learn who Chaliapin was. They saw that there was a different world in which their coevals from an ordinary college (albeit bearing the unusual name Galina Vishnevskaya School Theater), clad in a ball-dress, sang on stage and acted out scenes from Carmen, The Queen of Spades, and Eugene Onegin, while remaining modern advanced children. They realized that it is prestigious and great to be able to play beautiful music on the violin, even if doing so day and night, forgetting about the beach and discotheques, as is done by the young virtuosos of the violin ensemble of the Higher School of Music of Sakh (Yakutia). That, finally, these children travel the world often, bestowing on millions joy and delight no less than do pop stars. That sooner or later they will grow up, turning into such excellent musicians as Volodymyr Baikov, bass-baritone, laureate of international contests, soloist with Galina Vishnevsaya’s Operatic Center (incidentally, the man surprisingly resembles FСdor Chaliapin both physically and by his manners). And will finally become true idols of the public, like the brilliant singer Maria Stefiuk.
I don’t know whether Iryna Kordie, director of the festival, had this in mind, being the mother of four children, an excellent businesswoman, and quite a charming lady, when she conceived the idea of the festival, but I am convinced that she attained her goal. During the culminating action of the festival, the gala concert at the Chaliapin Grotto, with world operatic star Paati Burchuladze, accompanied by the Bolshoi Chamber Ensemble, seemed to have gathered all of the coast. And this is considering that people, many with small children, had to travel the narrow and thorny kilometer and a half Tsar’s Path, carved through the rock, to get to that fairy-tale place, then after the concert they had to return to civilization, groping their way through a pitch dark night. All those that made the trip were rewarded fully.
In the first place, the public heard one of the world’s best basses, Paata Burchuladze who sang from Chaliapin’s repertoire amidst excellent stage props created by Mother Nature, with thousands of lit candles and champagne flowing, to the accompaniment of the sea and wind. Burchuladze had flown to the Crimea from Germany (he lives in Austria and has Austrian citizenship) and immediately after the concert boarded a ship to sail through the night to catch his flight to Israel. The strength of his voice and the might of his talent were of such amazing power as to make the audience literally crazy, overpowering the noise of the tide and the cries of the seagulls. Burchuladze also emerged as an excellent actor when performing Don Basilio’s mist sophisticated cavatina in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Mussorgsky’s Flea aria, once so brilliantly rendered by Chaliapin. As was to be expected, glasses flowing with champagne, held by the VIP guests, cracked as Burchuladze reached his highest key. Legend has it that when Chaliapin visited Prince Golitsyn at his Crimean estate the host, cordiality incarnate, invited the opera star to accompany him along the Tsar’s Path and to partake of splendid Crimean champagne. The wine was stored in a unique natural grotto and there Chaliapin sang as a tribute to the beauty of the Crimean environs. His voice was of such strength that the glass of champagne in his hand cracked...
Second, the audience had seen Chaliapin’s daughter, 91-year-old Marina FСdorovna Chaliapin-Freddi (the last of his ten offspring) accompanied by her daughter Angela Freddi Monterforte with her husband Mauricio who had flown from Rome especially to attend the festival. The audience saw a lady of dazzling beauty (it was impossible to describe her as elderly) clad in some extremely expensive elegant attire, wearing costly jewelry, speaking excellent Russian (unlike Chaliapin’s granddaughter who had mastered a couple of Russian phrases while in the Crimea). During the concert it was impossible to tear one’s eyes away from the distinguished lady’s refined features (while in Paris, Marina Chaliapin won the title of Miss Russia). One was eager to remember her every gesture, the way she listened to the music. The celebrated lady declined an interview (after a tiring six-hour trip from Foros where she and her relatives were staying at her aunt’s former mansion, currently a military resort), but liberally autographed, drank Novy Svit champagne, smoked cigarettes, conversing with Count Sheremetiev and every rank- and-file guest to the festival — many were eager to just be close to her, take a closer look, maybe hear something she had to say, her being a daughter of the great Russian singer, embodying an epoch long since history...
Count Peter Sheremetiev (heir to an ancient dynasty related to Peter I, Kutuzov, Suvorov, the Ruriks; on the mother’s side, the Monomakhs, Yaroslav the Wise, Alexander Nevsky), Director of the Rachmaninoff Conservatory of Music in Paris, President of Europe’s only Russian Music Society, also left everyone with unforgettable impressions with his masculine charms, aristocratic bearing, and the same time genuine democracy. He gave an interview an afterward remembered every journalist’s name, he walked over and shared his admiration of what he had heard, sparing little praise.
Ukraine was represented by People’s Artiste of the USSR and Ukraine Maria Stefiuk, soloist with the National Opera of Ukraine. She made excellent company with the count and they shared the language of art. It was obvious that Count Sheremetiev, even though stealing glances at young girls around him, was enchanted by the Ukrainian prima donna.
Galina Vishnevskaya, Mikhail Gorbachev, the French, German, and Russian Ambassador Viktor Chernomyrdin, sent their greetings. The festival was attended by officials from the Portuguese Embassy and Crimean Minister of Culture Tamara Aronova, who had done so much to make this festival a reality.
