Dear Gentlemen,

In this blog I have tried to assemble a list of prominent Soviet tenors – tenors behind the Iron Curtain – singers the careers of which went largely obscure from the Western public because of the political realities of the era they were part of – realities which dictated the detachment of the Soviet opera from its Western counterpart.
It just so happened that these times were the Golden Era of the Russian Opera, and the voices that were hidden behind the Iron Curtain were of a remarkable quality.
In addition to that, the revival of these voices in the West is also of much interest because of the unique character and the idiosyncratic nature of the Soviet school of operatic singing, which was different from the Western in many aspects.
By “voices behind the Iron Curtain” I mean those artists whose entire career or a significant part of it developed during the most ideologically radical years of the Soviet rule and the Soviet Union’s disconnection from the West, and not those who had already established a name for themselves in an earlier period, or those who have only started their way in Soviet Union’s very last days or are singing well into the present – both are more familiar to the Western public.
In cases of some of the singers the information and the recordings presented here is all that is left of them, and in some cases appears for the first time in the internet, or in English and for the Western public.

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Tengiz Zaalishvili (1928)





Acclaimed artist of the Georgian Soviet Socialistic Republic.
His parents were of noble descent, and during the period of Stalin's mass terror were first sent to jail in 1937 and then driven out of their home, having to survive in harsh conditions.
His father had a tenor voice, and his mother was a soprano. They had a habit to sing together and invite quests to their house, even during the hardest of times.
When he was a child, Tengiz was surrounded by traditional Georgian music, and many new Soviet-style songs.
While in school he was the school’s choir soloist, and when the choir participated in an important contest, his singing drew the attention of some prominent figures.
After that he went to a special school for musically gifted children, where he studied with many future famous singers, such as Lamara Chkonia, Mamia Khatelishvili, Nodar Kvernadze.
In 1956 he graduated from the Tbilissi city conservatory (class of S.Inashvili), and started to sing on the Radio. Becoming very famous, he tried his luck in operatic singing, but his first attempts were not very successful. Nevertheless, after some work, he finally reached his goal and became one of the stars of Georgian Opera, singing there from 1959. His favorite plays were "La Traviata" and "Eugene Onegin".
Made tours abroad, including the USA.
 

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