Signed postcard photograph from the great Russian basso, in the title role of Massenet's Don Quichotte. Chaliapin would later play the character in the 1933 film version of the story. 3.5 x 5.5 inches (8.9 x 14 cm) and in very fine condition.
A 1926 New York Tribune review, notes that "Feodor Chaliapin, the great Russian singing-actor, returned to the Metropolitan at yesterday's opera matinee, to the manifest joy of a crowded house. It was an evidence of the singer's confidence in his own drawing power that he chose to effect his re-entrance in one of the feeblest of operas, Massenet's "Don Quichotte," in which he was first heard here last season. If anything had been needed to demonstrate anew the fact that Mr. Chaliapin is one of the supreme masters of operatic impersonation, the things he accomplishes in this opera would prove it up to the hilt. For Mr. Chalipain performs what is little short of a miracle in "Don Quichotte." Nothing could exceed the musical emptiness of Massenet's score or the dull ineptitude of the libretto. Yet whenever Chalipin is on the stage you forget the triteness and insipidity of the music, forget the stultifying libretto; for Chaliapin, by some wizardry of histrionic genius, has recaptured the essence of Cervantes's wonderful figure of the crackbrained dreamer, and has embodied it in his impersonation. The character, so inexpressively drawn by Massenet and his librettist, takes shape, finds voice, comes to life and the deathless Knight of Cervantes's imagination stands before you, veracious and unforgettable."
Signed postcard photograph from the great Russian basso, in the title role of Massenet's Don Quichotte. Chaliapin would later play the character in the 1933 film version of the story. 3.5 x 5.5 inches (8.9 x 14 cm) and in very fine condition.
A 1926 New York Tribune review, notes that "Feodor Chaliapin, the great Russian singing-actor, returned to the Metropolitan at yesterday's opera matinee, to the manifest joy of a crowded house. It was an evidence of the singer's confidence in his own drawing power that he chose to effect his re-entrance in one of the feeblest of operas, Massenet's "Don Quichotte," in which he was first heard here last season. If anything had been needed to demonstrate anew the fact that Mr. Chaliapin is one of the supreme masters of operatic impersonation, the things he accomplishes in this opera would prove it up to the hilt. For Mr. Chalipain performs what is little short of a miracle in "Don Quichotte." Nothing could exceed the musical emptiness of Massenet's score or the dull ineptitude of the libretto. Yet whenever Chalipin is on the stage you forget the triteness and insipidity of the music, forget the stultifying libretto; for Chaliapin, by some wizardry of histrionic genius, has recaptured the essence of Cervantes's wonderful figure of the crackbrained dreamer, and has embodied it in his impersonation. The character, so inexpressively drawn by Massenet and his librettist, takes shape, finds voice, comes to life and the deathless Knight of Cervantes's imagination stands before you, veracious and unforgettable."