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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Gennadiy Pischaev (1927)





Born on July 30th in the village of Zirgan, in Bashkiria. Tenor-altino. Acclaimed Artist of Russian Soviet Federative Socialistic Republic (1965).
Fought in World War II and lost his hand. All during his career he used to perform wearing a black glove.
In 1953 graduated from Moscow conservatory (class of G.I.Yudin) and started working as a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic.
Gave a lot of concerts. In his repertoire were opera arias, romances, soviet and folk songs.
Had an extremely gentle lyrical voice.
In 1963-1964 he performed all of Tchaikovsky's romances (and again in 1965, 1971, 1975). The romances of M.I.Glinka, S.V.Rahmaninov, P.Bulahov, A.Varlamov, A.Rubinstein, V.Kuprevich, S.Lyapunov were also an important part of his repertoire, as were vocal cycles of Mahler, Schubert, de Falla, Schumann, Beethoven.
His voice was frequently heard of Radio and Television.
Worked in the Opera Theater of Ufa, and in Saint-Petersburg Maliy Opera Theater where he performed Lensky, but he mostly abstained from performing on stage, because of his physical handicap.
His most famous operatic parts were Berendey ("Snow Maiden"), The Star-Gazer ("The Golden Cockerel"), The Indian Guest ("Sadko"), Nadir, Smith, Arlecchino, Petr ("Natalka Poltavka").
In 1980 started teaching in the vocal faculty of the State Institute for Theatrical Arts.
 

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