The great tenor Mikhail Alexandrovich history miscellaneous. Interview with singer Mikhail Alexandrovich Mikhail Alexandrovich sings after the war
Mikhail Davidovich (Davydovich) Alexandrovich(1914 - 2002) - Latvian and Soviet singer (tenor). Winner of the Stalin Prize, second degree (1948).
Biography
M. D. Aleksandrovich was born on July 10 (23), 1914 in the village of Birzhi (now Berzpils, Balvi region of Latvia) into a Jewish family of small traders. In the 1920s, he gained popularity as a child prodigy; at the age of nine, he toured the cities of Eastern Europe and Germany performing Jewish songs. folk songs in Yiddish, romances and arias in Russian and German languages and other works of non-children's repertoire, accompanied by composer and pianist O. D. Strok. He graduated from the Latvian Conservatory and trained in Italy with B. Gigli. In the 1930s he was cantor of synagogues in Manchester, Riga and Kaunas.
Since 1940 - in the USSR, chamber and pop singer. Seventy records were released in the USSR with a circulation of twenty-two million copies.
Since 1971 he lived in Israel, since 1974 - in the USA, since 1990 - in Germany. Until the end of his life he worked as a cantor, performed solo concerts on five continents, and recorded records and CDs. Published a book of memoirs “I Remember...” (“Machlis Publications”, Munich, 1985; “Progress”, Moscow, 1992).
Aleksandrovich performed with constant success among the public and critics for 75 years. Died on July 3, 2002 in Munich.
The singer's voice is not very strong, but beautiful, with a surprisingly pure and soft timbre and a wide range of high lyric tenor. He had a well-developed vocal technique and exceptional diction.
Awards and prizes
- Stalin Prize of the second degree (1948) - for concert and performing activities
- Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1947)
Links
- Biography in the Jewish Journal
- Program for “Echo of Moscow” “NON-PAST TIME” MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVICH: THREE-QUARTERS OF A CENTURY ON STAGE. 07/27/2014
- Vladimir Sharonov's film "Like a Nightingale about a Rose..." dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the world famous tenor. Cantor Mikhail Davidovich Alexandrovich.
Literature
- Makhlis L. S. Six quarries of Mikhail Alexandrovich. The life of a tenor. - M.: Ves Mir, 2014. - 656 p. - 1,500 copies. - ISBN 978-5-77770-563-1.
M. Aleksandrovich’s parents worked at a rural inn, servicing a tavern and a trading store.
The father, a self-taught musician, instilled in his children a love of music, taught them to sing and play the violin. Special attention He began to devote time to four-year-old Misha, who discovered a clear and strong voice, excellent musical memory and excellent hearing.
The parents understood that in rural conditions their son’s talent would wither and that it was necessary to settle in a big city, where experienced teachers would be able to develop little Misha’s musical abilities.
And in 1921, the Alexandrovich family, which already had five children, moved to the capital of Latvia - Riga.
In the same 1921, Mikhail Alexandrovich began to study at the People's Jewish Conservatory.
During the first year of classes, teachers prepared a varied and extensive program with Misha. It contained songs by Schubert, Schumann, romances by Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Grechaninov, Gounod, Jewish folk songs and songs by Jewish composers - Milner, Shklyar, Yampolsky. M. Aleksandrovich prepared some of his works in German (for example, Schubert’s songs), but he sang most of his works in Russian and Yiddish.
On October 19, 1923, the first public concert of nine-year-old Mikhail Alexandrovich took place in Riga, and was a great success. So that the audience sitting in the back rows could see the little artist, he sang while standing on a chair.
After the first concerts in Riga in the fall of 1923, the newspaper Rigashe Nahrichten wrote: “As for the nine-year-old singer Misha Aleksandrovich, about whose phenomenal talent a lot needs to be written, he has no equal among child prodigies. His first appearance on stage caused - otherwise and it couldn’t be - there was universal amazement and delight. A person who was not present at the concert simply cannot imagine all the soulfulness of his performance, which sounded equally powerful both in pianissimo and in forte, and the immense range of his voice, which manifested itself in the most impressive way.. "
M. Aleksandrovich’s family was in dire financial need, and in order to help the family, little Misha in 1924-1926. performed with great success in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Germany. During these years, he sang not only in Russian, German and Yiddish, but also performed many opera arias, romances and songs in Latvian, Hebrew, and Italian. During the period of voice breaking (1927-1933), young M. Aleksandrovich studied at the gymnasium and played the violin at the Riga Conservatory. After a six-year break, M. Aleksandrovich gave his first solo concert in Riga on January 1, 1933, and in the same year he began working as a cantor in the Riga synagogue. In August 1934, he moved to Manchester, England, where he became the chief cantor of the local synagogue. While living and working in England, M. Alexandrovich periodically traveled to Italy, where he improved his singing with the famous tenor Benjamino Gigli.
M. Aleksandrovich worked as a cantor in England for 3 years. In 1937 he moved to Lithuania, where he became cantor of the Oel Yaakov Choral Synagogue in Kaunas. Along with serving in the synagogue, M. Aleksandrovich sang in the opera and gave concerts. In the theater, he performed the roles of Lensky in Eugene Onegin and Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, but the singer’s greatest satisfaction and greatest success came from performing on the concert stage.
In 1940, Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union, and difficulties began with cantorial activities. M. Aleksandrovich received an invitation from the Belarusian State Stage to work in Minsk and in the spring of 1941 he began performing concerts in Minsk and other cities of Belarus.
During the Great Patriotic War M. Aleksandrovich sang a lot for the soldiers of the Transcaucasian Front (in 1942-1943), and between trips to the front he successfully toured in Baku, Tbilisi, and Yerevan.
On July 5, 1943, M. Alexandrovich gave his first concert in Moscow. The singer's enchanting velvety voice and his virtuoso performance of difficult opera arias delighted the Moscow public. Beginning in 1945, M. Aleksandrovich toured the Soviet Union extensively and with constant success.
In 1947, Mikhail Alexandrovich received the title Honored Artist of the RSFSR.
In 1948, he was awarded the Stalin Prize for his concert activities. In the Soviet Union, 70 records with his recordings were released - the total circulation of the records was 2 million copies. At the same time, during all the years of his life in the USSR, the singer was never given the opportunity to tour in the West.
In October 1971, M. Aleksandrovich and his family left for permanent residence in Israel, and in 1973 he moved to the USA.
After leaving the USSR, he successfully gave concerts in Tel Aviv, New York, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and Buenos Aires, and performed cantorial singing in synagogues. In the West, the singer released 7 long-playing records with recordings of opera arias, Russian romances, Jewish traditional songs, and complex cantorial psalms and hymns.
In 1985, M. Aleksandrovich’s memoirs “I Remember...” were published in Munich (published in Moscow in 1992).
In 1989, Mikhail Alexandrovich spent a month on a tour of the Soviet Union and in May 1991 again performed concerts in Moscow.
At the beginning of July 2002, at the age of 87, Mikhail Davidovich Alexandrovich died in Munich (Germany).
Photos sent by Vladimir Terentyev
Music Privateer
Sl. B. Ronginsky and A. Mainulova
Ans. p/u A.M. Kovaleva
17066 - 1949
The recording was made in MP3 format (1,133 MB)
Mexican folk song
Russian text by V. Krylov
Instr. ensemble directed by V.V. Meshcherina
26286 - 1956
The recording was made in MP3 format (1,436 MB)
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Mikhail Davidovich (Davydovich) Alexandrovich( - ) - Latvian and Soviet singer (tenor). Laureate of the Stalin Prize, second degree ().
Biography
M. D. Aleksandrovich was born on July 10 (23), 1914 in the village of Birzhi (now Berzpils, Balvi region of Latvia) into a Jewish family of small traders. In the 1920s, he gained popularity as a child prodigy; at the age of nine he toured the cities of Eastern Europe and Germany performing Jewish folk songs in Yiddish, romances and arias in Russian and German and other works of non-children’s repertoire, accompanied by composer and pianist O. D. String. He graduated from the Latvian Conservatory and trained in Italy with B. Gigli. In the 1930s he was cantor of synagogues in Manchester, Riga and Kaunas.
The singer's voice is not very strong, but beautiful, with a surprisingly pure and soft timbre and a wide range of high lyric tenor. He possessed a well-developed vocal technique and exceptional diction.
Awards and prizes
- Stalin Prize of the second degree (1948) - for concert and performing activities
Write a review of the article "Alexandrovich, Mikhail Davidovich"
Links
Literature
- Makhlis L. S. Six careers of Mikhail Alexandrovich. The life of a tenor. - M.: Ves Mir, 2014. - 656 p. - 1,500 copies. - ISBN 978-5-77770-563-1.
Notes
Excerpt characterizing Alexandrovich, Mikhail Davidovich
“I know everything,” Napoleon interrupted him, “I know everything, and I know the number of your battalions as accurately as mine.” You don’t have two hundred thousand troops, but I have three times that much. “I give you my word of honor,” said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor could not have any meaning, “I give you ma parole d"honneur que j"ai cinq cent trente mille hommes de ce cote de la Vistule. [on my word of honor that I have five hundred and thirty thousand people on this side of the Vistula.] The Turks are no help to you: they are no good and have proven this by making peace with you. The Swedes are destined to be ruled by crazy kings. Their king was mad; they changed him and took another - Bernadotte, who immediately went crazy, because a crazy person only being a Swede can enter into alliances with Russia. - Napoleon grinned viciously and again brought the snuffbox to his nose.To each of Napoleon’s phrases, Balashev wanted and had something to object to; He constantly made the movement of a man who wanted to say something, but Napoleon interrupted him. For example, about the madness of the Swedes, Balashev wanted to say that Sweden is an island when Russia is for it; but Napoleon shouted angrily to drown out his voice. Napoleon was in that state of irritation in which you need to talk, talk and talk, only in order to prove to yourself that you are right. It became difficult for Balashev: he, as an ambassador, was afraid of losing his dignity and felt the need to object; but, as a person, he shrank morally before forgetting the causeless anger in which Napoleon, obviously, was. He knew that all the words now spoken by Napoleon did not matter, that he himself, when he came to his senses, would be ashamed of them. Balashev stood with his eyes downcast, looking at Napoleon’s moving thick legs, and tried to avoid his gaze.
- What do these allies of yours mean to me? - said Napoleon. – My allies are the Poles: there are eighty thousand of them, they fight like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them.
And, probably even more indignant that, having said this, he told an obvious lie and that Balashev stood silently in front of him in the same pose submissive to his fate, he turned sharply back, walked up to Balashev’s very face and, making energetic and quick gestures with his white hands, he almost shouted:
“Know that if you shake Prussia against me, know that I will erase it from the map of Europe,” he said with a pale face distorted with anger, striking the other with an energetic gesture of one small hand. - Yes, I will throw you beyond the Dvina, beyond the Dnieper and will restore against you that barrier that Europe was criminal and blind in allowing to be destroyed. Yes, that’s what will happen to you, that’s what you won by moving away from me,” he said and silently walked around the room several times, trembling his thick shoulders. He put a snuff box in his vest pocket, took it out again, put it to his nose several times and stopped in front of Balashev. He paused, looked mockingly straight into Balashev’s eyes and said in a quiet voice: “Et cependant quel beau regne aurait pu avoir votre maitre!”
Balashev, feeling the need to object, said that from the Russian side things were not presented in such a gloomy way. Napoleon was silent, continuing to look at him mockingly and, obviously, not listening to him. Balashev said that in Russia they expect all the best from the war. Napoleon condescendingly nodded his head, as if saying: “I know, it’s your duty to say so, but you yourself don’t believe in it, you’re convinced by me.”
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|Zelina Iskanderova writes:
Every two years, at the end of August - beginning of September, Toronto hosts the largest North America and in the world Ashkenaz Festival - Festival of Jewish culture from all over the world! For those who will not attend the screening (September 4) of a Russian film about the outstanding singer Mikhail Alexandrovich and the coverage of a new book about him, organized by me at the ongoing Ashkenaz Festival 2016, on September 22 at 7 pm I will do a repeat in my “Evenings of Jewish Culture” Program "in the northern Russian-speaking part of Toronto, in the Bernard Bethel Center. A new Russian film “Like a Nightingale about a Rose...” and a presentation of Leonid Makhlis’ book “Six Careers of Mikhail Alexandrovich”, recently published in Moscow, will be shown. Life of a Tenor”, which served as the basis for the film, along with unique video and audio materials, as well as archival documents.
Mikhail Alexandrovich
Mikhail Davidovich Alexandrovich was born on July 23, 1914 in the village of Berspils (Latvia).
M. Aleksandrovich’s parents worked at a rural inn, servicing a tavern and a trading store. The father, a self-taught musician, instilled in his children a love of music, taught them to sing and play the violin. He began to pay special attention to four-year-old Misha, who discovered a clear and strong voice, excellent musical memory and excellent hearing.
And in 1921, the Alexandrovich family, which already had five children, moved to the capital of Latvia, Riga, where Misha began to study at the People's Jewish Conservatory.
On October 19, 1923, the first public concert of nine-year-old Mikhail Alexandrovich took place in Riga, and was a great success. In 1924-1926. the young singer performed with great success in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Germany.
During the period of voice failure (1927-1933), M. Aleksandrovich studied at the gymnasium and played the violin at the Riga Conservatory. He gave a solo concert again in Riga on January 1, 1933, and in the same year he began working as a cantor in the Riga synagogue. In August 1934 he moved to Manchester (England), where he became the chief cantor of the local synagogue. While living and working in England, M. Aleksandrovich periodically traveled to Italy, where he improved his singing with the famous tenor Benjamino Gigli.
In 1937, Aleksandrovich moved to Lithuania, where he became the cantor of the Oel Yaakov choral synagogue in Kaunas, sang in opera and gave concerts.
In 1940, M. Aleksandrovich received an invitation from the Belarusian State Stage to work in Minsk and in the spring of 1941 he began performing concerts in Minsk and other cities of Belarus.
During the Great Patriotic War, M. Aleksandrovich sang a lot for soldiers and toured in Baku, Tbilisi, and Yerevan.
On July 5, 1943, M. Alexandrovich gave his first concert in Moscow. The singer's enchanting velvety voice and his virtuoso performance of difficult opera arias delighted the Moscow public. Beginning in 1945, he toured the Soviet Union extensively and with constant success.
In 1947, Mikhail Alexandrovich received the title Honored Artist of the RSFSR. In 1948, he was awarded the Stalin Prize for his concert activities. In the Soviet Union, 70 records with his recordings were released - the total circulation of the records was 2 million copies. At the same time, during all the years of his life in the USSR, the singer was never given the opportunity to tour in the West.
In October 1971, M. Aleksandrovich and his family left for permanent residence in Israel, and in 1973 he moved to the USA. He has successfully given concerts in Tel Aviv, New York, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Buenos Aires, and performed cantorial singing in synagogues. In 1985, M. Aleksandrovich’s memoirs “I Remember...” were published in Munich (published in Moscow in 1992). In 1989, Mikhail Alexandrovich spent a month on a tour of the Soviet Union and in May 1991 again performed concerts in Moscow.
The singer died in July 2002 in Munich.
Ave, Maria (F. Schubert)
Barcarolle (E.Tellaferi - B.Roginsky and A.Manuilova)
Ballad
Amapola (Spanish folk)
Bella Donna (G. Winkler - E. Agranovich)
The sail turns white (A. Varlamov - M. Lermontov)
Will there be happiness or not (Romanian people - S. Bolotin, T. Sikorskaya)
Return to Sorrento (E. Curtis - D. Curtis)
Spring (E. Tagliaferi)
Here are the soldiers coming (K. Molchanov - M. Lvovsky)
Come out
Ivushka (Slovak folk)
Give me peace (E. Tagliaferi)
Like a nightingale about a rose (T. Khrennikov - P. Antokolsky)
Carmela (E. Curtis)
Carmen (Spanish folk)
Ring (F. Chopin - A. Mickiewicz)
Lullaby (M. Blanter - M. Isakovsky)
Lullaby (Z. Kompaneets - I. Fefer / A. Gayamov)
Our native land (E. Mario - A. Manuilova, B. Ranginsky)
Mandolinata (E. Toliferi - B. Ranginsky)
My friend (N. Kirkulescu - T. Brudnu/S. Bolotini and T. Sikorskaya)
Sea (E. Nutel - A. Khudozhnikov)
My chosen one (E. Nardell - A. Manuilova, B. Ranginsky)
My Tresita
We went out into the garden (M. Tolstoy - A. Tolstaya)
At the dawn of foggy youth (A. Gurilev - A. Koltsov)
Don’t wake her up at dawn (A. Varlamov - A. Fet)
Above the Blue River (Pokrass Brothers - V. Karpov)
Pouting your lips to threaten (P. Bulakhov - N. Pavlov)
Don't believe it, child (N. Petrov -?)
Don't hurt me (A. Hill - G. Registan)
Neapolitan romance (A. Pecchia - A. Manuilova, B. Ranginsky)
No, it’s not you that I love so passionately (N. Titov - M. Lermontov)
No, you fell out of love (E. Curtis)
Night tango (V. Matteo - E. Agranovich)
Oh Marie (E. Capua - V. Rousseau)
Oh my sun (E. Capua - D. Capurro)
Oh, don't forget me (E. Curtis)
Oh, don't kiss me (A. Varlamov - ?)
Oh, forget your past hobbies (T. Kotlyarevskaya)
With a sharp ax (A. Grechaninov - A.K. Tolstoy)
Song of Unity (M. Blanter - E. Dolmatovsky)
Song of the Sailor (Labrioma - A. Manuilova, B. Ronginsky)
Song about happiness (M. Blanter - S. Alymov)
Pop singer Mikhail Alexandrovich is also a Jew
“I don’t complain about my life in the Soviet Union. The only thing I miss is the opportunity to serve Jewish culture, my people. I don’t have such an opportunity here, and this is what is more important to me than all material wealth... But, God knows, I loved this country, I sincerely wanted to become his son. And it’s not my fault that I remained a stepson.”
Mikhail Davidovich Alexandrovich was born in 1914 in the village of Birzhi (now Berzpils, Balvi region of Latvia). In a family of small Jewish traders.
Misha was a very weak and rickety child. His father started playing music with him when his son was 5 years old. In 1921, the Alexandrovich family with five children moved to Riga. “My father, a self-taught musician, understood that something could come out of my voice and it needed to be developed.” At that time, there was a Jewish People's Conservatory in Riga, which was supported by patrons of the arts. But there was no vocal department there, and children were not accepted there either. “My father kept pestering me for a long time, and finally they agreed to listen to me, probably to get rid of it.” But when they listened to it, they cried. “I was accepted into the piano class,” since there was no vocal department at this conservatory..
Zhidovin Misha was eight and a half years old when his teachers decided to show him to Riga music teachers and journalists. The concert took place in the hall of the Conservatory, 200 people gathered. Misha sang a program of two parts - and in professional circles it became a sensation. Alexandrovich: “I’ll explain to you why this happened. There were violin prodigies - Jascha Heifetz, Misha Elman. There were pianists, conductors, for example, Willy Ferrero, there were even cellists. But there were no singers. What there were were soloists in churches and synagogues. But none of them turned to classics or folk music. That’s why there was a sensation.”
In the 1920s, the Jew Misha Alexandrovich, when he gained popularity as a child prodigy, toured the cities of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Germany at the age of nine. He performed Jewish folk songs in Yiddish, romances and arias in Russian and German and other works from the non-children's repertoire, accompanied by the composer and pianist Jewish Strok. Trained in Italy with the famous tenor Beniamino Gigli...
Then there was a break due to my voice breaking. The voice returned at the age of 16-17. The family's financial situation was very difficult, and already at the age of 18, Alexandrovich was forced to go on stage. “But Latvia was under the influence of Nazi Germany, persecution of Jews began, and at a time when I needed support, all doors began to close in front of me. And the father again took matters into his own hands. He realized that I needed to become a cantor: at that time I could not yet perform in Europe, and I had nothing to live with.” A cantor is a singer in a synagogue. “I didn’t recognize it as art and considered it humiliating for a chamber singer to do it. Because the quality of the music I grew up with was much higher. As a musician, I was ashamed to do this. But I started listening to records, then I began studying with conductor Zigismund Zegor from the main Riga synagogue. I was doing my father a favor. So he got me into this repertoire. And so I came to a competition in a synagogue in Manchester (this is in England), where they were looking for a young cantor. There were 120 candidates from all over the world - it was the central synagogue of the city. I was 19 years old, I sang Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday I was offered a contract.” After that, I began working on the repertoire, and by the next year I was more or less a professional cantor.
Then he returned to Latvia, from there he moved to Lithuania and Kovno. He continued to sing in the synagogue, but his singing was only half cantorial and half operatic. “But people of the new generation were already listening to the radio, records, they knew Caruso, Gigli, Skip and all the great singers. And when they came to the synagogue, they suddenly became more pleasant to listen to all this. Therefore, my synagogue began to be filled with young people, who even then did not go to synagogues very much. And the elders also took it well. Only the Orthodox did not accept.”
Near Kovno there was the famous Slobodskaya yeshiva. Yeshiva is a higher Jewish religious educational institution for the study of the Oral Law, mainly the Talmud. The Orthodox were irritated by the non-Jewish sound, reminiscent of opera. “And I also organized concerts in the synagogue with a symphony orchestra. The orchestra members came, half of them were goyim. And the Jews were so eager to go to the synagogue that they had to sell tickets at a nearby newsstand to limit the crowd. They were afraid that the synagogue would be destroyed. They broke iron gate, window. The Orthodox want to impose "cheyrem" (anathema) on this synagogue. And I go out and sing Lensky in Hebrew, and “Elisir of Love.” The Jews are delighted, but the Slobodskaya Yeshiva is against it. Finally, the board of our synagogue and the yeshiva synod gathered, and a storm began there. Then the chief rabbi of Lithuania stood up. He was ultra-religious - Shapiro is like that, the smartest person and diplomatic consultant to President Smetona. Can you imagine what a smart person he was if the president made him his diplomatic adviser? He stood up and said: “All the years we have been dealing with one question: how to keep Jews in the synagogue? After all, Jews have stopped closing their shops, stores and offices so as not to lose money, they do not go to synagogues, they sit in offices, and their shops are open.” . How to stop this process? We have little success, people are going to the synagogue less and less. This young man arrived and now we are fighting against the fact that the synagogue cannot accommodate everyone. They are forced to sell tickets and call the police to disperse the people. This very bad. We should salute him - he alone does more than all of us."
At that time, Western music dominated Alexandrovich’s repertoire with the addition of Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov; he did not perform any works by Soviet composers at that time.
In 1939-1940 - a new stage of the Second World War. Previously, there was the division of Czechoslovakia, the entry of German troops into Austria... Now Hitler’s attack on Poland, the division of Poland between Hitler and Stalin, the annexation of Bessarabia to the USSR, the annexation of the Baltic states to the USSR, then the recapture of a piece of territory from Finland by Soviet troops... Then a new stage - the invasion of German troops to the territory of the USSR...
Success in a cantor's career is good, but Aleksandrovich's central and firm desire is to become a chamber singer on the concert stage. In the spring of 1941, thirty-year-old singer Mikhail Alexandrovich, at the invitation of the Belarusian State Stage, came to Minsk, where he began performing concerts in the cities of Belarus. Of course, the Jews adapt - they introduce Soviet songs into their repertoire. With the beginning of the war, he sang for the soldiers - on the front line as part of the front-line brigades, for the soldiers of the Transcaucasian Front, for home front workers in Baku, Tbilisi, Yerevan. “Invariably in a tailcoat, bow tie and patent leather shoes.”
Alexandrovich: “All through the war I sang at the fronts, my main repertoire was in Italian, Russian, German, and sometimes, a little, in Yiddish. Occasionally - one or two Soviet songs. They received me wonderfully. It is amazing that when the wounded, freshly bandaged soldiers were brought from the battlefield, they asked for the classics. They never asked for a Soviet song. My first post-war listeners were people returning from the fronts.”
- Why didn’t you become an opera singer?
There is no singer who would not like to sing in opera. Already in Lithuania I began to prepare the repertoire. Despite the fact that anti-Semitism was gaining strength, the Lithuanian government and opera management asked me to sing in the opera: they understood that there would be large fees. But as soon as I started rehearsing the first parts - these were Almaviva and Lensky - I felt internal protests. What's the matter? My height is one meter and fifty-eight centimeters, my voice is lyrical, very small, I was a chamber singer by nature: I could give my all only when I sang alone.
And here - it was impossible for me to find a partner: they were all 20 centimeters taller and 20 kilograms thicker than me, and they all had bigger voices. If I had to sing a duet with any baritone or bass, I could not be heard: I could not sing as loud as they could, and they could not sing quietly. I was already starting to suffer. Or, imagine a duet with your partner. I can't hug and kiss her, the director had to set up a bench so we could sit down, otherwise she had to lean towards me. Those scenes with swords? All the swords were taller than me. I couldn’t reach my partner and was chopping the air, and they could stab me anywhere at any moment. The scenery was in the way, the makeup was in the way, the costume was in the way. I'm used to singing in a tailcoat, face to face with the audience. One. Everything else was against me. I realized this quickly."
But Soviet officials did not want to understand him. In 1949, the singer saw on the board in the theater an order from the then Minister of Culture Lebedev: “In order to improve the vocal culture of the Bolshoi Theater, accept Alexandrovich into the theater and prepare five opera parts.” Alexandrovich: “I knew that one or two times I simply wouldn’t be heard, and that would be the end. But no explanations helped.” Luckily, a scandal broke out with Muradeli’s opera, the minister was removed, “and while a new one was being installed, I quietly slipped out of this case.”
Jews often wrote, write and will write about the persecution of Jews under Stalin, but this is an exaggeration, because there was not a single year when at least one city in the USSR was cleared of Jews. And Aleksandrovich also lived quite happily under Stalin, although the special authorities knew that he was not only a Jew, but that he had previously been a singer in synagogues. They knew that he would prefer to sing Jewish songs rather than Soviet ones.
Alexandrovich: “The ways of the Communist Party are inscrutable, like the ways of the Lord. If they need to, they can raise a dead man from the grave and use him.” In 1946, Jerusalem declared an international day of mourning. Six million Jews were to be commemorated in all synagogues around the globe. (The Jews claimed and continue to claim, in addition to a few objective scientific Jews, that during the Second World War Hitler killed 6 million Jews). And Stalin also allowed such Jewish worship to be held in Moscow.
“They looked at my profile and my biography, which they knew better than me, and through the synagogue they invited me to lead this service. What was their goal? Tick. And when they announced that such a service would take place, you understand that there was not a single Jew who did not want to come: there was not a single family in which there were no victims. The Moscow synagogue could accommodate one and a half thousand people, but 20 thousand came. The entire diplomatic corps came, members of the government, generals, even the marshals, and when I started singing “El Male Rachamim,” it was as if something had collapsed in the synagogue. Fainting began. And people began to be carried outside to ambulances - they expected such a reaction. Well, they achieved their goal. The entire foreign press came, they took photographs, published articles all over the world. This is what they needed - to strike a blow at the propaganda that claimed that persecution of the (Jewish) religion was taking place in the Union.”
After this service, the synagogue turned to the Central Committee, the department of religions, with a request to allow Alexandrovich to speak on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. (Rosh Hashanah is Jewish New Year which the Jews celebrate for two days in a row. Yom Kippur - "Day of Atonement" or "Day of Judgment". This holiday is considered one of the most important in the Jewish tradition. On this day of repentance and remission of sins, Jews fast (do not drink or eat), do not wash, and do not wear perfume. According to the Talmud, on this day God gives his verdict). And in 46 and 47 they were allowed to invite Alexandrovich. A choir consisting of Jewish soloists from the Bolshoi Theater sang in the synagogue. And again - ten to fifteen thousand Jews came, loudspeakers were placed on the street, and Jews stood in tallit (Jewish prayer cloak).
Aleksandrovich: “They took money for entry into the synagogue, and so much came out that every time they sent Stalin a personal gift - 300 thousand rubles. But in 1948, after Churchill’s Fulton speech, which meant the beginning cold war, when the synagogue contacted the Central Committee for the third time, the same people who once invited me to perform wrote me a letter - to me, and not to the synagogue: “It is inconvenient for you, the Honored Artist of the Republic, to sing in the synagogue.” (Maxim Rader. “Vesti”, Tel Aviv).
http://www.mmv.ru/interview/01-02-1999_alex.htm
And we note that the Jew Aleksandrovich was not even a single day under interrogation or in a prison cell. Alexandrovich even received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1947. In 1948, Alexandrovich received the Stalin Prize for his concert activities. In the USSR, 70 records with his songs were released with a circulation of twenty-two million copies. His concerts were broadcast to the USSR three to four times a week. He traveled freely throughout the Soviet Union. He was allowed to give a magnificent concert in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory... His biographers write that over the years of his life in the Soviet Union, Aleksandrovich sang in 6,000 concerts... His songs were broadcast on the radio, also from televisions, people danced to his songs on dance floors...
They write that in the USSR under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, state anti-Semitism grew. But for some reason they did not touch the Jew Alexandrovich again. At his request, he was allowed to sing two Jewish songs in Yiddish at concerts. Once in Kyiv, officials tried to prevent it. His performances at the Kyiv Philharmonic were announced, tickets were sold out, but after Alexandrovich’s arrival in Kyiv it turned out that two Jewish songs were excluded from the concert program. Alexandrovich refused to perform, and the administration had to apologize to him and allow the singer to sing songs in the Jewish language.
Of course, not everything was as we wanted. I wanted to sing Jewish songs more and more often. I wanted to develop and expand Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. There were also difficult experiences. In 1959, the Jews celebrated the 100th anniversary of their writer Sholom Aleichem in many countries. This was also the year of propaganda of Jewish culture. In 1959, the Soviet authorities ordered Aleksandrovich and a group of Jewish artists to perform in Paris “to promote Jewish culture.” The press wrote that the performances were triumphant. On the one hand - good. On the other hand, Aleksandrovich understood that the Soviet authorities were using him, fooling Israel and the West, and that Jewish culture was flourishing in the USSR. And Alexandrovich was very worried about this. He wrote about this in his book “I Remember.”
“Participating in this deceitful farce, I involuntarily remembered what was forever imprinted in my soul. I remembered how in 1948 I stood as a guard of honor at the coffin of the great Jewish actor Mikhoels and could not take my eyes off his face, covered with a thick layer of makeup, applied to hide bruises and wounds - traces of a staged car accident. I remembered how at a funeral meeting, saying goodbye to a friend, I wanted to sing his favorite Jewish song “The Shepherd Boy,” but the killers did not allow this either. They uprooted our culture. They destroyed its most talented leaders. Others were silenced. And now, some ten years after this spiritual genocide, we had to demonstrate to the whole world that, they say, not everything is rotten in our multinational socialist kingdom. The farce was not a success...But it’s still hard for me to realize that I too found myself a participant in this shameful performance.”
But, of course, Aleksandrovich did not say a word in his book about the expansion of the Jews in Tsarist Russia, that Russia, already under the tsars, had become the most Jewish country on the globe (in terms of the number of Jews), although there was no referendum on Jews in Russia. He didn’t say a word about the First Great Leap of the Jews into power in 1917 and subsequent years. About the mass destruction of the Russian people. On the destruction of Russian Orthodox culture. About the mass settlement of Russian cities by Jews. About Jewish censorship...
Of course, this Jewish singer was limited in the USSR. He was not given the right to sing Jewish songs every day in the quantity he desired. Even two Jewish songs at his concert were not desirable. And he wanted to sing more in Yiddish. They understood that he was not a Soviet singer. They even began to restrict him a little on television, they stopped publishing records... “And you should go to Israel!” Some Jews who were unpleasant to the authorities were then allowed to go abroad and were even slightly pushed out to the West. Alexandrovich was one of those unpleasant people. In October 1971, Alexandrovich and his family were also allowed to fly from the USSR with his family (wife Raya Levinson and daughter Ilona) on a plane for permanent residence in Israel. He began working there again as a cantor and went to concerts in the USA. But soon life in Israel did not satisfy him. In Israel it was impossible to earn much, there was little audience, and the Orthodox were not very happy. Then in 1974 Aleksandrovich moved from the Jewish state to the USA, here he performed in the largest halls in the USA, and was a cantor in Canada and Florida. In 1990 he moved to Germany. Until the end of his life he worked as a singer in a synagogue, performed solo concerts in many cities around the world, different continents, recorded records and CDs. Published a book of memoirs “I Remember...” (“Machlis Publications”, Munich, 1985; “Progress”, Moscow, 1992).
18 years after leaving the Soviet Union, a telephone rang in Alexandrovich’s apartment. The director of a large concert association asked: “Would you like to come with concerts to the former Soviet Union?"
- I was a little stunned by this call - after all, I was branded an enemy of the people throughout the Union. My records were banned from being sold, and if anyone asked for them in a store, they were broken and trampled on in front of the buyer. I received this news for the second time the other day from a new immigrant.
So my first question was: do they remember me? To which he replied: come and see for yourself. I came and took part in international festival, the collection of which went to the benefit of disabled veterans of the Patriotic War for the purchase of wheelchairs abroad.
What can I say - in Odessa, for example, there were two concerts at the stadium. At one there were 15 thousand people, at the other - 25. And then - three concerts at the Philharmonic. On my first visit I gave 13 concerts and another 24 on my second and third visits. So they “forgot” me.
http://www.mmv.ru/interview/01-02-1999_alex.htm
At the invitation of the State Concert and the Union of Theater Workers, Alexandrovich made his first tour of the former Union. Then he repeated his visits several more times. Visited Moscow and Leningrad, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Magadan...
Aleksandrovich’s daughter Ilana worked for many years in the news department of Radio Liberty in Munich. To the detriment of the USSR and Russia. In 1994 in Munich, Aleksandrovich participated in a protest march against German nationalists who were unhappy with the expansion of Muslim migrants and Jews in Germany.
Alexandrovich died in Munich in 2002. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Munich, Germany. A photograph of the grave monument is given on the Jewish Necropolis website.
