The Fame of F. I. Shalyapin
Урок английского языка в 8-м классе.
УМК Opportunities. Intermediate
Michael Harris, David Mower. Longman 2000
Objectives
• to practise using prediction strategies when reading
• to match a series of pictures with a story
• to practise using multi-part verbs
• to practise using vocabulary on the topic “Theatre. Opera”
Possible Problem
Students may “panic” when faced with a lengthy text, so it is important to use the Prediction Strategies to give them confidence before they read the text.
Before you start
Teacher: What do you know about the life of the man in the photo? Tell the class. (Example: John Lennon was a musician. He was in the Beatles.)
Pupil 1: Chaliapin Feodor (Russian: Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin) born February 13 (February 1, Old style), 1873, Kazan, Russia – died April 12, 1938, Paris, France.
Russian operatic bass, whose vivid declamation, great resonance, and dynamic acting made him the best-known singer-actor of his time.
(Britannica)
Teacher: What do you think the key words tell us about Shalyapin? Use the mini-dictionary to check the meaning, if necessary:
footlights, soloist, poster (playbill), backstage, choir, baton
Students look at the pictures and find the things.
Check students answers by having them point to the things in the picture.
Teacher: Match these words with the definitions.
Key: 1. k; 2. d; 3. j; 4. b; 5. i; 6. a; 7. h; 8. l; 9. c; 10. f; 11. e; 12. g; 13. m
Reading Strategies: Prediction
1. Read the strategies.
(for students)
• Before you read the text, look at the title and any photos or drawings.
• Read the first few lines of the text. Guess what kind of text it is (e.g. newspaper article, adventure/love story).
(for teacher)
• Elicit ideas about what kind of text it is and what it is going to be about. Do not give the correct answers at this stage.
Students will find out if their predictions are correct when they read the text.
Pupil 2 – biography.
Pupil 3 – memoirs.
• Before students start reading the text, remind them not to worry about understanding every word but to understand the gist of the story.
2. Read the text and check your prediction. Order the pictures.
 The name of Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin (1873–1938) is forever linked with the history of the city of Ufa – the great Russian singer’s first debut took place on the Ufa opera stage. His stay in Ufa was not lengthy (from September 1890 till May 1891) but it was important for the beginning of his singing career. Later, in his book The Mask and the Soul the singer recalled: “Theatre has been my passion since childhood... In Ufa I have already breathed in the dust of the backstage, I have become aware of the luring noise of the hall before the curtain goes up, and, mainly, the footlights...”
F. I. Shalyapin arrived in Ufa as an opera choir member of Semyonov-Samarsky of the city of Kazan in September 1890. “With a hand trembling of happiness I signed my first theatre contract” – he later wrote.
On an early rainy and gloomy morning one of Yakimov’s ships arrived at Sofronov wharf in Ufa. The singer’s first accommodation was in Pavlunovsky Street behind the mosque. He later moved to house 1 in Gogol Street, which you can find there today.
“My God, how happy was I to see my name on the playbills saying “second basses” Afanasyev and Shalyapin”, the singer would recall. He described his first appearance in the theatrical musical “A Singer from Palermo” by A. Zamara as follows: “I put on a Spanish costume, blackened my eye-brows, painted my lips red trying to look like a handsome Spaniard... The curtain rose and we sang together... I was trembling inside both with fear and joy. I was singing as if in a dream. The audience was shouting, applauding, while I was almost weeping with excitement.” (Pages of My Life)
Everything the 17-year old Shalyapin did showed his love of the theatre. In his book Pages of My Life he wrote that all the company members, even the stage hands, got on with him very well: “I loved theatre so much that I was equally happy to do everybody’s job: poured kerosene into the light-lamps, cleaned windows, swept the stage floor, climbed the gridirons, fixed the scenery.”
The Kazan company were putting on operas as well. It was in Ufa that Shalyapin’s first solo debut on the opera stage took place. On the 18th of December, 1890 the opera “Galka” of the famous Polish composer S. Monyushko was being staged. The part of “Stolnik”(Senior Official) was unexpectedly offered to the young singer.
December 18, 1890, had become for the singer a date to remember. On that day he had his first solo performance. In his memoirs the singer writes about the event: “I stood up from the armchair and infirm on feeble limbs, went up to the prompt-box as if for an execution. Following the conductor’s baton, I began singing my part in mazurka tempo “Oh, friends, what luck”.
According to the plot, those were the words that the Stolnik addressed to his guests, while I stood with my back to them not only completely ignoring them, but actually even forgetting that there was anyone else on the stage but me. I felt totally unhappy at that moment. Goggling at the conductor, I kept singing in a futile attempt to make a gesture... But my arms have unexpectedly become very heavy and were able to move only from the hand to the elbow... But my voice, luckily, sounded free. When I finished singing I heard a storm of applause, which surprised me, for I thought the applause was meant for someone else. But the conductor whispered hastily: “Bow, devil’s son, bow!” The opera ran three times and Shalyapin was a success with his part.
During the first performance there was a curious incident that upset the young beginner to tears. Later in his book The Mask and the Soul Shalyapin was more optimistic about what had happened, drawing the following conclusion: “Even now, I superstitiously believe it’s a good sign for a beginner to sit down and miss a chair on the stage in front of all the spectators.”
His success had encouraged him. Semoyonov-Samarsky offered him a number of short solo parts in operas.
The singer’s dream to sing the complicated part of the Unknown in A. N. Verstovsky’s opera “The Askold Tomb” came true on March 3, 1891. The entrepreneur suggested that Shalyapin should sing a benefit concert and choose a part for himself, thus wishing to show gratitude to the young singer and indicating that he had become “a very popular member of the company”. The benefit concert of the young singer was warmly received by the audience. They sent him envelopes with money and “a silver watch with a steel chain”. “Besides, – the singer wrote in his book Pages of My Life, – of the bonuses I was granted about 30 rubles. I became rich.”
After the theatrical season was completed, Shalyapin decided to spend some time in Ufa. The Local Society of vocal singing, music and dramatic arts lovers decided to attract the talented singer to concert performances to collect the money necessary for him to get further education in either the Moscow or the St. Petersburg conservatoires. He recalled that his fans, the public and “the Chair of the Local Administration himself praised my voice very much!” He was persuaded to work for the Administration (Zemstvo) as a clerk with a salary of 20 or 30 rubles “and participate in concerts organized by the Society. Besides, the singer sang in the Ilyinskaya Church Choir on a regular basis.
The Chairman of the Drama Department of the Society suggested that Shalyapin should participate in amateur performances, which were staged in the Noble Assembly Concert Hall (now the Ufa State Institute of Arts). On March 6, 1891, he, for the first time in his singing career, sang the part of the old servant in A. G. Rubinstein’s opera “The Demon”. A few days later the singer sang the part of Mephistopheles in Gounod’s opera “Faust”. One of the events of Shalyapin’s life in Ufa later became a plot of A. I. Kuprin’s story “Gogol-Mogol”.
It was in Ufa that Shalyapin took his first lessons in vocal singing from V. D. Parshina. Shalyapin left the quiet, provincial Ufa. But during the rest of his bright life and brilliant career the singer kept in touch with many a citizen of our town. In 1911, he transferred his income from one of his concerts to Ufa to help the starving population. The Ufa born singer Ye.Ya. Tzvetkova (maiden name Barsova), who was called by her contemporaries “the Pearl of the Russian Opera Stage” sang together with him on the stage of S. I. Mamontov Russian Private Opera. The singer maintained contacts with V. Timanova, who was born in Ufa, and was a famous pianist, a pupil of F. Liszt, the famous Turkic scholar A. Validi,
M. V. Nesterov – a great Russian artist.
The citizens of Ufa remember and honor the name of the famous Russian singer. In the 1990s a Shalyapin Society was set up in the city. Since 1991 Opera Art Festivals, Conferences and Contests dedicated to Shalyapin have been held here on a regular basis. The Bashkortostan Council of Ministers passed a resolution on March 12,1996 “ Establishing F. I. Shalyapin’s Museum in Ufa”. There will be a monument to the great singer near the Academy of Arts.
(From Britannica) In 1892 he went to study with Dimitri Usatov in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia), and he become a member of the private Mamontov Opera Company in 1896, where he mastered the Russian, French, and Italian roles that made him famous. Chaliapin’s interpretation of the title role in Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” was his most famous. His major dramatic parts also included Philip II in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Don Calos”, “Ivan the Terrible” in Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Maid of Pskov”, and the title role in Arrigo Boito’s “Mefistofele”. His great comic characterizations were Don Basilio in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” and Leporello in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”.
Chaliapin appeared in the major opera houses in Milan (1901, 1904), New York City (1907), and London (1913).
Beginning in 1921 he performed frequently with the Metropolitan and Chicago opera companies in the USA and with Covent Garden in London. He also toured every continent, frequently with his own opera company.
He made some 200 recordings from 1898 to 1936, starred in the movie “Don Quixote” (1933), and wrote the autobiographical Pages from My Life (1926) and Man and Mask (1932).
In 1984, his remains were disinterred from Batignolles Cemetery in Paris and reburied in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
3. Read the text again and answer these questions.
1. Why do we call Ufa the town of Shalyapin’s debut?
2. In what way do Ufians honor the name of Shalyapin?
3. Where did Shalyapin perform?
4. What role was his most famous?
5. What do you know about the other activities of Shalyapin?
4. Let’s play a game “Shalyapin and Ufa”
Intellectual Game “Shalyapin and Ufa”
The participants of the game are given the task. The Quizmaster writes the whole line: “F. I. Shalyapin (?–?) is a great Russian (?).
If you get this question right, you go through to the final. Read the whole sentence aloud, please:
Contestant: “F. I. Shalyapin (1873–1938) IS A GREAT RUSSIAN SINGER”.
Quizmaster: Yes, that’s absolutely right. F.I. Shalyapin is a Russian operatic bass whose vivid declamation, great resonance, and dynamic acting made him the best-known singer-actor of his time. Congratulations, you have made it.
Now listen to the voice of Shalyapin.
The voice of Shalyapin.
QUIZ:
Ufa was where he started his professional creative activity, the path to worldwide fame.
Ufa natives tenderly preserve the memory of
F. I. Shalyapin.
Starting from 1991 in memory of the great singer an annual opera art festival “Shalyapin’s evenings in Ufa” is held in the capital of Bashkortostan.
In 1996, the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Bashkortostan passed a declaration “To create a museum of F. I. Shalyapin in Ufa”. We hope it will come true some day.
5. Homework
Get ready to tell a visitor to Ufa about F. I. Shalyapin’s life in our city.
P.S. The text about F. I. Shalyapin is project work of Inna Matvietz (8 form).
Key: 1. D; 2. C; 3. B; 4. C; 5. B; 6. D; 7. D; 8. C; 9. D; 10. C
Л.Ф. Топоркова,
гимназия № 39, Уфа |