100Singers's video: 100 Singers - VLADIMIR ATLANTOV

Vladimir Atlantov, Tenor (*1939) Tchaikovsky: PIQUE DAME (The Queen of Spades) Herman's aria: "Prosti, nyebesnoye sozdanye" ("Forgive me, heavenly creature") Conducted by Mark Ermler (1974) My personal opinion: It's not easy these days to write about Russian singers and obstain from political statements, especially not when these artists were very close connected to the Soviet System and played (according to Galina Vishnevskaya in her memoirs) an inglorious role in it. I try to concentrate myself only on musical aspects. I would like to begin with a personal memory: In 1981, the most notable Bolshoi Opera stars gave a joint concert in my hometown: Tenor Vladimir Atlantov, his wife soprano Tamara Milashkina, mezzo Tamara Sinyavskaya and baritone Yuri Mazurok. Undoubtedly the evening's magnet was Atlantov, an impetuous tenor who stood up to any international comparison. The great love duet from TOSCA with Milashkina was the concert's highlight - and I still remember, Atlantov sang the whole sentence "È qui che l'esser mio s'affisa intero, occhio all'amor soave, all'ira fiero ..." on one long breath without a brief respite between "intero" and "occhio" - just as he did in the 1976 recording helmed by Mark Ermler. With his fortissimo voice, Atlantov, trained at the Leningrad Conservatory and at the opera school of La Scala Milan, was rated as an exponent of Russian dramatic tenors in the tradition of Nikander Chanajew (1890-1974) and Georgii Nelepp (1904-1957). In fact, all of his recordings show powerful, loud and persistent singing, which earned him the nickname "The Russian Corelli", although according to my taste a comparison with Mario Del Monaco is more appropriate. If you take for example the part of the obsessed card player Herman in Tchaikovsky's PIQUE DAME, you have to admit, Atlantov gives an impressive performance. It's one of the most sprawling roles in the entire opera literature, demanding both endurance and sensitivity. The tenor must stand and sing on stage for almost the entire opera - and at least two of his three great arias ("Prosti, nyebesnoye sozdanye", "Shto nasha zhizn? Igra!") are tough nuts to crack. Certainly it is no accident, that Nicolai Gedda, highly celebrated in Russian operas, put aside Herman after only four Met-performances and even rejected a scheduled recording: "The vocal 'artillery' wasn't the right thing for my lyrical voice ..." Atlantov, on the other hand, was used already in 1974 for a full recording, performed the work many times at the Kirov and Bolshoi theatres, seven times in Vienna (1971, 1992) and once in San Francisco (1994). The microphone-microscopy of a late second recording from 1991, led by Seiji Ozawa, showed that the voice of the now 52-year-old tenor had lost its youthful impetus. Already the first one was not entirely free of flaws and challenges a comparison with the bombastic Zurab Anjaparidze (1966), but can't match the 1950 version with Georgii Nelepp, who shaped the exhausting role not only dramatic but also empathic - something the constantly forte singing Atlantov only very rarely succeeded in doing. This also affects his Lensky in EUGENE ONEGIN (1970, Rostropovich), which he approaches too hard and too masculine for my taste; disregarding the melancholy mood of the work. "Atlantov ...", so wrote British music critic John Steane in his book about "The Grand Tradition", " ... transforms Lensky into an ardent, big, rather simple fellow without the poetic and the lingering elegance of a Dmitri Smirnov." An all-purpose tenor at the Bolshoi Theatre from 1967 on, Atlantov ventured into Verdi's OTELLO remarkably early. A complete live recording, taped two years later, is the document of wild and impulsive singing with an insensitive voice - and also subsequent live recordings from Munich (1980) and Verona (1982, captured in a video) do not show a different image. To the contrary, over the years Atlantov became increasingly larmoyant in the role (and with regard to the dreaded calls for "Sangue, sangue, sangue" in the "Si, pel ciel" duet even more ungainly). Nevertheless, he performed the gigantic part twenty-five times in Vienna between 1980 and 1993 - at the same time as Plácido Domingo, who also triumphed in New York, while Atlantov's short Metropolitan Opera career as Otello ended after only three performances in 1994. A complete studio recording was never materialized. A witty reviewer once wrote that some tenors with powerful voices like to present the same ones excessively and thus suffer from a disease called "Tenorismo", a non-curable condition that usually affects only singer-narcissists. What remains is the realization, that Atlantov was a tenor with impressive vocal material, but whose sustained strong-man singing in the long run did not always flatter sensitive ears ...