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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Kazis Gutauskas (1909)





Born on 4th of September in the village of Kitlyarishkay, Lithuania. Lyric-dramatic tenor. People’s artist of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (1959)
In 1939 graduated from Kaunas city conservatory (classes of of S.Marinisis and E.Vilinis).
In 1939-41 -  soloist of the opera troupe of the Big Theater in Caunas.
In 1941-44 - soloist of the opera troupe of Vilnius City Theater.
In 1944-64 – leading tenor of the Lithuanian Theater of Opera and Ballet. Also took part in some stagings during 1980-1990.
As a visiting singer he performed in the Opera Theaters of Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Minsk, Riga, and different theaters of the Caucasus Republics of the USSR.
Among his roles: Andrey (“Mazepa”), Shuyskiy (“Boris Godunoff”), Don Karlos, Alfred, Rhadames, Cavaradossi, Rudoph (“The Boheme”), Jose, Faust, Lutauras (“Grazhina” by Karnavichius), Vashkis (“Marite” by Rachunas).
As a concert singer participated in the performance of the 9-th symphony by Beethoven,  the Requiem by Verdi, Stabat Mater by Rossini, the cantatas “Soviet Lithuania” by Rachunas, “Marina Melnikayte” by Klenickis.
From 1963 – taught in the Vilnius Musical School of U.Talyat-Kalpshi.
Died on 10th of October in Vilnius.

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