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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Alexander Korobeychenko (1900)







Born on 5th of March in Kiev. Acclaimed artist of Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic (1939).
Born into a family of a railroad mechanic.
Graduated from Technical College and worked as a hydro-mechanic, then a cinema mechanic. At that stage he started showing an impressive voice, but a musical career was not in his plans. He enrolled to a Polytechnic Institute, but after studying there for only six months eventually went to an audition in the Kiev conservatory and was accepted. His father thought that a singer’s career was not a very promising and profitable one, but Korobeychenko promised him he would also learn another trade. He quickly turned a shoemaker. He would attend the conservatory during the day, and worked as a shoemaker in the evenings. Only when on the fourth year of his studies, he was invited to sing in the Opera Theater and could stop working as a shoemaker. But he never forgot the trade, and all through his operatic career was tailoring his own stage costumes. In the conservatory he was in the class of V.Cvetkov, who was a pupil of the Belgian professor Camille Everardi, a famous baritone.
Worked in many Opera Theaters during his career: 1924-1926 - in the Kiev State Opera Theater, in 1926-1927 - in Kiev and Odessa Opera Theaters, in 1927-1928 - in Sverdlovsk Opera Theater, in 1928-1930 - in Baku Opera Theater, in 1931-1932 - in Sverdlovsk Opera Theater, in 1932-1933 - in Kharkov State Opera, in 1933-1936 - in Kiev K.Libkneht Theater, in 1936-1946 - in Saint-Petersburg Maliy Opera Theater and in 1942-1946 - In Saint-Petersburg Kirov Opera Theater.
Hovewer, the venue with which he became associated most of all was the Donetzk Opera Theater.
Played the role of Calaff in a first ever staging of “Turandot” in USSR. Was also the first one in the role of Khlopusha in “Emelyan Pugachev” by M.Koval. Had 87 roles in his repertoire, many of which were sung in premieres.
Proud, outspoken and independent in his nature, he fell out of favor in a very early stage of his career and was restricted by the authorities. Even the management of the Donetzk Opera Theater hated and was afraid of him, not being able to actually do anything to a singer of his stature. It was ironic that the director of the Theater previously worked in a prison. But the authorities virtually erased from operatic history this one of the best tenors of the 20th century. Only 2 records with his singing ever got out.
In 1960 had to stop performing. His last role was that of Faust.
Korobeychenko was the first teacher of the legendary Ukrainian operatic singer Anatoliy Solovyanenko.
Died on April 11th 1971.