Slobodskaya, Oda. (1888-1970)
Signed Photograph
Signed halftone program photograph of the great Russian-born British soprano. She is shown in a dramatic fur stole and pearls, and has boldly signed across the corner of the image. 9 x 11 inches.Oda Slobodskaya "studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory and joined the company of the Mariinsky Theatre, where she made her début in 1919 as Lisa in The Queen of Spades. During the following years she sang most of the principal soprano parts of the Russian repertory and appeared also as Sieglinde, Marguerite (Faust), Elisabeth de Valois and Aida. In 1922 she was invited to sing the part of Parasha in the first performance of Stravinsky’s Mavra in Paris; and thenceforward she began to make extensive appearances outside Russia. [...] She possessed the imagination and the vivid temperament to convey to an audience ignorant of Russian the precise mood of each song, whether elegiac, boisterous, satirical or childlike. As her many recordings reveal, these rare interpretative powers were matched by a beautiful and ample voice of characteristically Slavonic colour and by a technical mastery which showed itself especially in supple and sustained legato phrasing." (Desmond Shawe-Taylor, New Grove Online.) (14999)
Signed Photograph Opera