Anastasia Vyaltseva

Anastasia Dmitrievna Vyaltseva (; 1871–1913) was a Russian mezzo-soprano, specializing in Gypsy art songs. Enjoying the cult following and supported by the popular press (which called her The Incomparable, Nesravnennaya), she toured regularly and was engaged in numerous operettas (Saffi in The Gypsy Baron by Johann Strauss, Perichole in La Perichole and Helene in Offenbach's La belle Helene), as well as operas, appearing in the Mariyinsky Theatre, as Carmen (Carmen by Georges Bizet), Amneris (Aida by Giuseppe Verdi, Dalila (Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns).

Biography Early years Anastasia Vyaltseva was born on 1 March 1871, in Altukhovo, a sloboda in the Sevsky Uyezd of the Oryol Governorate, now the Navlinsky District of Bryansk Oblast. Her mother Maria Tikhonovna was a local peasant woman. Her father Dmitry Vyaltsev, born in Svyazye village (in Trubchevsk, according to other sources), was a forester servant supervising some of the estates of a local landowner. Rumour had it she was an illegitimate child of the estate's manager, named Alexey. The latter arranged Maria's marriage to Dmitry Vyaltsev, a forester, who agreed to give her children his surname and paternal (middle) name.

After Dmitry's death (he was killed by a falling tree) Maria Tikhonovna with Nastya and two sons, Yakov and Ananiy, settled in her elderly parents' small wooden hut at the outskirts of Altukhovo. Several years later she took her three children to Kiev where she worked as laundress.

Career At the age of fourteen Vyaltseva visited the Kiev ballet-master Lenchevsky and in 1887 joined his ballet troupe. A year later she approached Yosif Setov, a respected operetta entrepreneur whose troupe was staying in Kiev for a winter season. Impressed by her singing, he invited the youngster to join in as a dancer, since there were no vacancies in the vocal section at the time. Dancing was not Vyaltseva's strong point though, and, the quality of her voice notwithstanding, the public thought little before pelting at her rotten tomatoes. Setov did everything he could to encourage the girl, and later she remembered him with gratitude, calling him her "artistic godfather." In 1890, now a member of the Zdanovich-Boreyko group, she toured the Russian province, performing miniature solo parts for the first time. who told the girl she needed serious musical education.

1893 was the year when Gypsy art songs became highly popular in the Russian capital. In Nikolai Kulikov's musical Gypsy Songs in Characters, produced by Palm, Vyaltseva received a small part of Katya. Her rendition of "I Fall in and out of Love at Will" brought the young singer her first success and became her signature tune for years to come. In October 1903 the singer signed an "opera contract" with the private Moscow Solodovnikov Theatre. In 1904 the similar contract made sure the Bouffe Theatre would produce twelve operas especially for her. and Solodovnikov, under pressure, cancelled the show. This, in its turn outraged Vyaltseva's fans, among them satirist Vlas Doroshevich who denounced this 'victory' as a 'shame'. Her next one here, Delilah in Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns, received better reviews, yet some critics remained unconvinced with the distinctive "romance intonation" that seemed to creep into the singer's arias from her popular repertoire.

On 11 and 14 June 1904 Vyaltseva appeared as Dalila in the Saint Petersburg's Bouffe Theatre and, despite disappointing performance, was supported by the popular press. The directors were on her side too: it looked like any opera performance of Vyaltseva's was now destined to be a hit, regardless of quality. Later in 1904 Vyaltseva brought her Delilah to Kharkov and was praised there for bringing "more subtlety" to the part. Some critics remained unconvinced. "She has to finally choose between her 'gypsiness' and serious music. Vyaltseva's ardent passions, deep sighs, shining smiles and sparkling glances on the one hand and opera on the other, just do not mix," Yuzhny Krai opined. Her performance as Mignon was ostensibly overwrought and critics wondered why she chose to impart such passions to this rather lackluster character. But then Peterburgskaya Gazeta started to publish humorous sketches, ridiculing the singer's artistic strife. Later in Moscow, in the middle of Samson and Delilah the public started to call for "Troyka", one of her better known romances. This proved to be the last straw for Vyaltseva; she quit opera and left her main ambition, to sing Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Evgeny Onegin, unfulfilled. In all, she recorded about a hundred tracks, of which at least 55 have survived. "[You] should hear how the subtlety of the French song merges with the outburst of Gypsy emotion, how tenderly Offenbach's waltz line intertwine with fiery lyrics, to understand why the audience were transfixed," the theatre critic A. Legri wrote. Critics also lauded her performances in Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, Der Vogelhandler by Carl Zeller, and La belle Helene by Offenbach. In the Vilno region two villages destroyed by fires were built up from scratch on the money donated by Vyaltseva, who arrived at the building site to control the whole process of restoration personally. Later she did the same in the Perm governorate. In her native Altukhovo she built a maternity hospital and herself bought for it all the necessary medical equipment. None of this is corroborated by the Russian sources, which give the picture of a self-controlled, well-organized person who loathed any kind of excess. Caring a lot for the quality of her voice which she trained diligently for years on a daily basis, the singer avoided alcohol and was strict with her diet.

Supporting many of her younger colleagues financially, Vyaltseva was a strict mentor and chastised those prone to alcohol abuse. This brought her the reputation of something of a moralist in the Russian artistic community. An outspoken critic of the current tendency to use operetta as a sideshow to restaurant business, Vyaltseva in 1907 launched her own campaign for reviving the genre by stripping it of all associations with alcohol. Once in 1909 the Yakov Shchukin's Hermitage started to advertise champagne during her shows (without informing Vyaltseva who, they knew, would have protested), the singer quit the theatre she'd spent 12 years with.

In stark contrast with her extravagant stage persona, in real life Vyaltseva was a modest, economical woman, known to repair her old dresses. Despised by opera prima donnas, Vyaltseva was admired by choirgirls with whom she was on friendly terms. "While our France-touring divas were departing in personal carriages from rehearsals, Vyaltseva went home on foot or hired a street cabman," colleague Vladimir Krieger remembered. "Unlike many of her peers Vyaltseva proved herself eager to make personal sacrifices. Doors of her home were always open to those in need of help, she received hundreds of people every year," biographer Kizimova wrote. In mid-1912 before embarking upon what would be her final national tour, the singer, coming out of the house, was frightened by a huge black cloud above her; from then on she was often heard saying these concerts were going to be her swan song. In case of the city's failing to make an option, the sum should go to charities, supporting children from peasant families.Vyaltseva's houses and plots of land proved to be worthy of 567.636 rubles. Her personal belongings, 1652 items, raised 151,852 rubles more at the auction. But the municipal authorities failed to use the money constructively. Yevgeny Kovsharov has got some of his payments, before committing suicide in 1914. According to the Bolshevik Government's commission's 1918 report, Vyaltseva's money has been embezzled by numerous agents and lawyers. After several months’ rest in Kamenka, she went on tour again, first across the North-Western Russia, then going South. Vocally the singer was in fine form, but her physical condition worsened. In Kursk she fainted on stage. The doctor arrived, brought her to her senses and advised immediate hospitalization. Instead she returned to the stage and finished the show. After that, Vyaltseva gave 14 more concerts. The one in Voronezh had to be cancelled, after all: she managed a short address to the audience and was promptly transported to Saint Petersburg. The second transfusion, now with another officer as a donor, proved fruitless.

Vyaltseva loved children and easily developed strong bonds with them; she and six-year-old Vera Taskina, the daughter of Vyaltseva's pianist, became close friends and the singer carried with her Vera's photograph, considering it a lucky token. Vyaltseva adopted a boy, Yevgeny Kovsharov (whom she found, aged two months, in a basket under the bouquet of flowers, after one concert) and did everything to give him good care and education. Yevgeny committed suicide in 1914, two years after his stepmother's death. Vasily Biskupsky outlived his wife by 32 years. reminiscent of "a lively cello" and compared her vocal style to that of Lina Cavalieri. Much has been made of Vyaltseva's fine diction, as well as her dramatic talent, stage charisma, "the magic power of gesture", the trademark 'Vyaltseva smile' and the 'hypnotic' effect the singer seemed to exert upon her audience.

Among the specialists, though, there were detractors. "Vyaltseva sings her romances with too much chastity, her style is clinically sterile and in a way too dry," critic V.P.Kolomiytsev opined. She has been called "high priestess of banality", while Vladimir Stasov hated her so passionately as to use mostly expletives while mentioning the singer and her style, not only in conversations, but in his letters. "Not a single other person in the last 16-17 years has given so much warmth and joy to the people of Petersburg, as Vyaltseva," wrote Stepan Skitalets in 1913. "Sure, Vyaltseva performed only the Gypsy numbers and simple romances which haughty 'serious' musicians refused to recognize. But it is to the credit of her genius that by such simple means she managed to evoke the magic of Art and enliven our hearts," the writer continued.

With her 'sunny', 'springtime' look which contrasted with the darker imagery the ethnic Roma singers like Varya Panina conveyed, Vyaltseva "was the priestess of the triumphant love," as one critic put it. "Her sorrow was elegant and light in touch, her passion subtle rather than soul-tearing. The true queen of her genre, she represented... something nice and tender, like the breath of fresh air," he concluded. "People of younger generation were in love with the true People's singer Anastasiya Dmitrievna Vyaltseva. She entered our life and at some point defined the very essence of it," Sofja Giatsintova, the renown Soviet theatre actress and director remembered.

Memory Two of Vyaltseva's houses (at Moyka, 22 and 24) remain, the others were demolished due to their poor condition. There is no Vyaltseva museum in Saint Petersburg, but there is one in Bryansk.