Vladimir Kashperov

Vladimir Nikitich Kashperov (, 25 August 1826 – 26 June 1894) was an Imperial Russian composer, theorist and professor.

Kashperov was born on 25 August 1826 in Chufarovo within the Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) province in the Russian empire. He died on 26 June 1894 in the village of Romantsevo, located in the Mozhaysky district, Moscow.

Family Kashperov was married to Adel Nikolaevna Kashperova (maidan name: Beketova), a soprano operatic singer. Glinka's book "The School of Singing" is dedicated to her. He had one daughter named E. V. Kashperova.

Life In 1844, he graduated from the School of Guards Ensigns in St. Petersburg, and served in the Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment. Upon leaving military service, he began to devote himself to music. He studied piano with German composers Adolf von Henselt and Hans Vogt. Having been recommended by Mikhail Glinka, in the 1850s he began to take lessons in composition from German musicologist and composer Sieghfried W. Dehn in Berlin. Kashperov then travelled to Italy and lived there for eight years (1857-1865), whereupon he learned the basics of Italian vocal singing. In 1865, he returned to Moscow upon an invitation from Anton Rubenstein Pavel Bogatirev, and Aleksandr Gorotsov.

Kashperov was close with the atmosphere of both Russian and European intelligentic culture at the time including Russian political philosophers and poets like Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev, Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi, as well as Russian composers, writers, and playwrights like Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Ivan Turgenev, and Alexander Odoevsky.

Career Vladimir Kashperov wrote numerous operas, as well as Russian romances, and was critically engaged with public music education, personally founding a choral society in Moscow as well as operating his own music school. In 1874 he became a member of the "Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers."

According to Richard Taruskin, Kashperov was one of the "Russian Italianists" due to his extensive training in Italy and compositional style. Favorited by Alexander Ostrovsky and one of Glinka's star pupils, his eight years in Italy contributed to his Italianate musical language. While in Italy, Kashperov had three of his operas produced: Maria Tudor (Milan, 1859); Rienzi (Florence, 1863); Consuelo (Venice, 1865). These operas, while no longer performed, were among the first performed Russian operas in Italy since the 18th century. Kashperov's opera "The Storm" (867), due to extensive critique by critics like Alexander Serov for its lack of sophistication, never entered the Mariinsky Theatre canon.

Some of his work was exhibited at the Chetropov Museum north of Simbirsk in the 1910's, even though it had been partially damaged by fire.

Compositions

Operas

1859: Mary Tudor 1863: Rienzi (self-translation of Wagner's opera) 1865: Consuelo 1867: The Storm (Гроза)