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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Kipras Petrauskas (1885)





Lyric-dramatic tenor. Born on Novermber 23rd in the village of Tseikinay-Kyayzay in Lithuania. People's Artist of the USSR (1950). Received The Stalin Premium (1951).
His father was an organ player and his brother – M.Y.Petrauskas - was a composer, and gave his younger brother his first lessons in music.
Took part in the revolutionary movement of 1905-1907, and was given a jail sentence.
In 1911 graduated from Saint-Petersburg conservatory (class of S.I.Gabel), later perfected his skills with E.Rozatti in Rome.
In 1906 he made his debut as a singer in Vilnius in the opera ‘’Birute’’ by M.Y.Petrauskas – his brother.
In 1911-1920 - soloist of the Saint-Petersburg Mariinsky Opera Theater (later renamed Kirov Opera Theater). From 1920 lived in Lithuania, where he was one of the founders of the Lithuanian National Opera Theater in Caunas. Performed in this theater up to1958.
Among his roles: Imposter-Prince, Bayan, Sinodal, German, Levko, Almaviva, Faust, Canio, Turridu, Othello, Tangeizer, Grishka Kuterma.
As a young singer was highly appreciated by Chaliapin, and performed both alongside him, and the legendary Russian singers Leonid Sobinov and Antonina Nezhdanova.
Also gave concerts. Toured abroad.
Petrauskas was a deputy in the second and fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Received the Lenin Award (1954) and the Red Banner Award (1951).
From 1949 - taught in Vilnius conservatory (from 1951 – professor).
Died on January 17th in Vilnius.