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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Vladimir Nechaev (1908)





Born on July 28th in the village of Novo-Malinovo, Orel region. Acclaimed Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialistic Republic (1959).
Was born into a wealthy family, which suffered during the years of the Soviet policy of collectivization.
In his childhood sang in a church choir. He was drawn to acting, and along with his older sister, who also liked singing, staged improvised plays and concerts. His sister later too became a singer, even performing in the Bolshoi Theater, and then a vocal teacher.
In the end of the 1920-ies went from his village to Moscow. There he worked as a simple laborer on a construction site of the Central Telegraph (where some years later he will work as a soloist). Learnt vocal in amateur troupes, a musical seminary and the Stanislavski Opera Studio with A.V.Nezhdanova and M.I.Saharov.  
In 1932-35 he is working in the Central Moscow Theater of the Working Youth.
Starting from 1942 - soloist of the all-USSR Radio Society.
Was probably the most famous and loved performer of songs by soviet mass-music composers.
Recorded many famous patriotic songs during the Second World War.
Sang a lot in a duet with his vocal soul-mate - the baritone Vladimir Bunchikov.
Died tragically on 11 of April 1969.