Feodor Chaliapin
Russian opera singer and actor (1873-1938)
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин, romanized: Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin, IPA: [ˈfʲɵdər ɨˈvanəvʲɪtɕ ʂɐˈlʲapʲɪn]; 13 February [O.S. 1 February] 1873 – 12 April 1938) was a Russian opera singer. Possessing a deep 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.
Early life
Chaliapin was born Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin on 1 February (O.S.) 1873 into a peasant family in Kazan, Russia, in the wing of Lisitsyn–Emelin house on 10 Rybnoryadskaya Street (now Pushkin Street). This wing no longer exists, but the house with the yard where the wing was situated is still there. The next day, Candlemas (The Meeting of Our Lord), he was baptized at Epiphany Cathedral (Bogoyavlenskaya) on Bolshaya Prolomnaya street (now Bauman Street). His godparents were his neighbors: the shoemaker Nikolay Tonkov and Ludmila Kharitonova, a 12-year-old girl. The dwelling was expensive for his father, Ivan Yakovlevich, who served as a clerk in the Zemskaya Uprava (Zemstvo District Council), and in 1878, the Chaliapin family moved to the village of Ametyevo (also Ometyevo, or the Ometyev settlements, now a settlement within Kazan) behind the area of Sukonnaya Sloboda, and settled in a small house.
Early career
His vocal teacher was Dmitri Usatov. Chaliapin began his career in Tbilisi and at the Imperial Opera in Saint Petersburg in 1894. He was then invited to sing at the Mamontov Private Opera (1896–1899); he first appeared there as Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod's Faust, a role in which he achieved considerable success.
“Feodor Chaliapin” enters the record as russian opera singer and actor (1873-1938). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Feodor, Chaliapin and Russian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q189164. VIAF identifies the subject as 46730083. The Library of Congress control number is n50002543. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1938, 1878 and 1894.
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This entry incorporates text from “Feodor Chaliapin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.