100Singers's video: 100 Singers - MARK REIZEN

Mark Reizen, Bass (1895-1992) Michail Iwanowitsch Glinka: RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA Farlaf 's rondo: "Blizok uzh chas torzhestva moego" ("The hour of my triumph is near") Conducted by Alexander Melik-Pashayev (1938) My personal opinion: For a listener not familiar with Mussorgsky's BORIS GODUNOV, background and opera's plot are likely not easy to understand. The work exists in no less than three versions by the composer himself, as well as editions by Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich and others. Sometimes the order of the acts varies, depending on a conductor's will. And to carry it to the extreme: For recordings, some basses and producers tend to fill different roles with just one singer. In 1952, the Bulgarian Boris Christoff persuaded HMV patriarch Walter Legge to give him Boris, Pimen and Varlaam all at once - three contrary characters and only one voice. The result is more confusing than convincing, especially in the Boris-Pimen scene shortly before the Tsar's death. Apart from that, Christoff's tendency to vocal overacting is many times unbearable. Ten years later, in 1962, he repeated this madness with the blessing of conductor André Cluytens. The effect is a failed production, not least because Evelyn Lear as the sly Marina is a miscast. The role needs a rich mezzo such as Irina Arkhipova or Tamara Sinyavskaya. In my personal view, Christoff as Boris Godunov is over-estimated ... Some say, Christoff (1914-1993) was the legitimate successor of Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938). That may be right, but only with regard to vocal antics. A true Chaliapin descendant was the Soviet bass Mark Reizen, precisely because he did not try to copy his predecessor - according to the old wisdom that most imitators are attracted anyway by what is inimitable. The voice of Reizen (born 1895 as the son of a mine worker) was inherently a mighty instrument: Deep, firm and imperious. He joined the Bolshoi Theatre in 1930, and remained there until 1954. His portrait of Boris Godunov became so popular, that in 1949 newly recorded arias with him were inserted in a tape that was produced one year earlier, to replace Alexander Pirogov. The same procedure was used in 1962, to include George London in a recording previously made with Ivan Petrov, who was superb but unknown (and not lucrative enough) in the west ... "Like some basses of the old school, Reizen plays his voice like a cello ...", praised John Steane in "The Grand Tradition". And Conrad L. Osborne raved about "a remarkable timbre, which was like deep blue velvet that covers a metallic core." Another description gives Jens Malte Fischer in his book "Grosse Stimmen": "Reizen's voice was wonderfully rounded, but without the typical Russian brittleness. It was a voice of great volume, always smooth and never sharp-edged." Indeed, Reizen could create a gigantic sound without losing his elegant sumptious tone. My first encounter with his voice was through the aforementioned recording of BORIS GODUNOV and two albums from the "Lebendige Vergangenheit" series. These editions document Reizen's paramount importance in the field of Russian basses. What he really was able to do, becomes quite clear if we hear him in the non-russian standard repertoire (which, I suspect, is better known to most listeners). Despite its great weight and volume, his voice was flexible and always clear in expression; not a single syllable was articulated inaccurately. Admirable his parlando in Basilio's "La calunnia" from Rossini's BARBIERE and the breathtaking security moving him through the allegro of Méphistophélès' "Le veau d'or" from Gounod's FAUST. No matter how vehement he sang, Reizen always was lyrical. He did not serve excessive effects and histrionic outbreaks (unlike Christoff). In the word's best sense, he was an old-fashioned bel canto singer ... With a voice full of grandeur and authority, Mark Reizen was predestined to embody the superior figures of Russian opera: Mussorgsky's Boris and Dosifey in KHOVANSHCHINA, the old Prince Gremin in Tchaikovsky's EUGENE ONEGIN (a role Reizen still sang at the age of ninety), Rimsky-Korsakov's Sobakin in THE BRIDE OF THE TSAR, Glinka's Ivan Susanin in A LIFE FOR THE TSAR as well as Ruslan and Farlaf in RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA, whose crackjaw rondo I have selected for my tribute to Mark Reizen - a singer who knew, like only a few other owners of gargantuan voices, how to harmonize vocal power and tonal beauty.