Mark Reizen
Encyclopedia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Ukraine) — died November 25, 1992 Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Russia
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...
) was a leading Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singer with a beautiful and expansive bass
Bass (voice type)
A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
voice.
Life and career
Reizen was born into a Jewish family of mineMiner
A miner is a person whose work or business is to extract ore or minerals from the earth. Mining is one of the most dangerous trades in the world. In some countries miners lack social guarantees and in case of injury may be left to cope without assistance....
workers in 1895. He had four brothers and a sister, and all were trained in music, playing mandolin, guitar, balalaika and accordion. He served as a soldier in the First World War. He studied engineering at the Kharkiv Politechnic, and also voice at the Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
conservatory with the Italian professor Federico Bugamelli in 1919-1920. He debuted at the Kharkiv Opera in 1921 as Pimen in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
, and in 1925 moved to the Mariinsky Theatre
Mariinsky 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...
in Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. Reizen toured Europe performing in Paris, Berlin, Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
and London in 1929-1930.
A tall man commanding a strong stage presence, he joined the Bolshoi Theatre
Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world...
in 1930, remaining there as a principal bass until his retirement in 1954. Among his roles were: Ivan Susanin and Ruslan from the Glinka
Mikhail Glinka
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka , was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music...
's operas, Don Basilio (The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
by Rossini
Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...
), Mephistopheles (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...
by Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
), Prince Gremin (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....
by Tchaikovsky), Salieri (Mozart and Salieri
Mozart and Salieri
Mozart and Salieri is a one-act opera in two scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, written in 1897 to a Russian libretto taken almost verbatim from Alexander Pushkin's 1830 verse drama of the same name....
), the Viking merchant (Sadko
Sadko (opera)
Sadko is an opera in seven scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto was written by the composer, with assistance from Vladimir Belsky, Vladimir Stasov, and others. Rimsky-Korsakov was first inspired by the bylina of Sadko in 1867, when he completed a tone poem on the subject, his Op. 5...
) in operas by Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
, the old Gypsy (Aleko
Aleko (opera)
Aleko is the first of three completed operas by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The Russian libretto was written by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and is an adaptation of the poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin. The opera was written in 1892 as a graduation work at the Moscow Conservatory, and it won the...
by Rachmaninov
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
), Wotan in Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Ring of the Nibelungs, Konchak (Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
by Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
), Philip II and Procida in Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's operas, and so on. He became a particularly memorable interpreter of Boris and Dosifei in the operas by Mussorgsky.
Reizen was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941, 1949 and 1951.
In 1967 he began teaching, and became a professor at the Moscow Gnessin Institute. He gave an important recital for his 80th anniversary, and for his 90th sang Prince Gremin (in Eugene Onegin) at the Bolshoi in Moscow in July 1985. On both occasions his voice proved to be in a remarkable state of preservation.
Reizen died at the age 97 of a stroke. He is considered to have been the most illustrious Russian bass since the days of Lev Sibiriakov (1869-1942) and Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.During the first phase...
(1873-1938), and the possessor of one of the very finest voices of its type heard anywhere in the world during the past 100 years. A number of recordings are available on CD and verify his greatness. Film clips of him performing also exist.
Quotations
- "Reizen is stupendous. His lush, voluminous basso rolls through the music unconstrainedly. It sits easily at the bottom, peels forth brilliant Fs and F-sharps at the top (and one hair-raising high G), and in-between displays flowing line and a mezza-voce that rivals prime PinzaEzio PinzaEzio Pinza was an Italian basso opera singer with a rich, smooth and sonorous voice. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas...
or Chaliapin. Ruslan's heroic fire and tenderness are there - it's a complete piece of work". (Conrad L. Osborne, in the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera)
- “In 1930, Reizen went on a tour of the Moscow Bolshoi TheatreBolshoi TheatreThe Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world...
, sang Mephistopheles (FaustFaust (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...
) and was immediately noticed by StalinJoseph StalinJoseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, who was a music and opera lover. He described a somewhat comical scene as he was invited to the official government box during the intermission, where, dressed as the DevilDevilThe Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
, he was introduced to Stalin. The dialogue went something like this:
- –You sing very well.
- –Thank you.
- –Why don't you come here more often?
- –You see, I sing in Leningrad and only visit here.
- –Why not move here and visit there?
- –You see, I have a contract there, and an apartment too…
- –Perhaps we can do something and find you an apartment here.
- The following day and in typical Soviet style, he was surprised by the unannounced visit of an official car with a soldier, who was under orders to take him hunting apartments.
- This is how Mark Reizen was engaged at the Bolshoi.” (Anecdote, Opera Gems)
(' 'Mark Reizen - Autobiography - [Autobiograficheskie Zapisky,Stati i Vospominanya) 2nd edition 1986 pp135)
Recordings and discography
- Lebendige Vergangenheit - Mark Reizen CD 0717281890595 Label: Preiser 1997, Time: 76 minutes (with biographical liner notes).
- Detailed discography: http://russia-in-us.com/Music/GRV/Reizen/dg_Reizen.htm, http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Namedrill?&name_id=22265&name_role=2.