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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Rauf Atakshiev (1925)




Was born on July 15th in the city of Geokchay. People’s artist of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic (1967).
In the age of 8 started studying piano, and in 1943 graduated from Baku city Musical School and entered Azerbaijan state conservatory.
In 1946 entered Moscow State Conservatory (class of K.Igunnov) and studied vocal with the legendary singers A.Nezhdanova and V.Barsova.
In 1952 finished graduate school and went back to Baku, where he performed as pianist and soloist of the Azerbaijani Theater of Opera and Ballet.
From 1953 – started to teach in Azerbaijani conservatory, and from 1969 was the head of the piano department. In 1972 he received the title of professor.
Received the medal of Lenin (1970) and the medal of the Friendship of Peoples (1980), honorary certificates of the presidium of the Higher Soviet of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic and Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Died on the 3rd of February 1994.
 

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