Sergey Lemeshev is a famous Russian and Soviet opera singer, lyric tenor. In 1950 he received the title of "People's Artist of Russia", a few years before that he became a laureate of the then-honorable Stalin Prize. For many years he was a teacher and opera director.
Singer biography
Sergey Lemeshev was born in 1902. He was born in a village called Old Knyazevo on the territory of the Tver province. His parents were poor peasants, his father died very early.
In 1914, Sergey Lemeshev became a graduate of the parish school. At the same time, he began to master vocals from phonograph records. He received his first lessons in singing and musical notation in an art and craft school, where he began to participate in his first concerts and performances. When the hero of our article studied at exemplary courses of the Komsomol staff, he received a referral to the conservatory. That was in 1920.
Musical education
In 1925, he received a graduate diploma from the Moscow Conservatory. The year before, Sergei Lemeshev began performing at an opera studio organized at the Bolshoi Theater, which was led by Stanislavsky himself. Fame brought him the party of Lensky in the classical opera of Tchaikovsky based on Pushkin's novel of the same name "Eugene Onegin".
In the future, she became his crown role, which during his career he has performed more than five hundred times. Lensky's party performed by singer Sergei Lemeshev became legendary. He performed it exactly 501 times. In 1965, after five hundred performances, he officially left the opera stage. And in 1972, at a gala evening dedicated to his 70th birthday, he sang it for the last 501th time.
On the opera stage
In the biography of Sergey Lemeshev there were many opera scenes. In 1926 he made his debut at the Opera and Ballet Theater in the Urals, then he sang for three years in the Russian Opera, which was organized at the so-called Sino-Eastern Railway. All this time, he mainly lived in Harbin. Then he collaborated with the Opera House in Tiflis.
In 1931 he was again invited to the Bolshoi Theater, where he made his debut in the opera The Snow Maiden, performing the part of Berendey. Until 1957, it was officially considered one of the most famous tenors of the Bolshoi Theater along with Ivan Kozlovsky. He intermittently performed on this stage until 1965.
In 1939 he made his film debut. True, this role remained the only one. He played in the comedy of Alexander Ivanovsky and Herbret Rappaport's “Musical History” of the driver Petya Govorkov, who unexpectedly became an opera singer for everyone around him.
During the war against the Nazis, he spoke at the front along with creative teams. During one of these concerts, he caught a cold in the middle of winter, and doctors diagnosed him with pulmonary tuberculosis. Only surgical intervention saved the life of an opera singer.
In addition to performing in opera houses, he paid much attention to the chamber repertoire. He was proud that he had all one hundred romances of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. As a pop singer he performed the most famous compositions of Khrennikov, Blanter, Novikov, Mokrousov, Theological.
In 1947 he performed on the stage of the Berlin State Opera, performing his Lensky's crown part in the opera Eugene Onegin.
In 1951, he first appeared in the role of an opera director, staging Verdi's La Traviata opera on the stage of the Maly Opera House in the city on the Neva. Six years later, he was entrusted with the production at the Bolshoi Theater - it was the Masser opera Werther. He himself played the part of the protagonist in it.
Many remembered Lemeshev as a teacher. Since 1951, for ten years he taught at the department of opera training, then worked at the Moscow Conservatory, since 1959 he directed the opera studio there, staged several performances with students.
Lemeshev not only performed himself, but also popularized opera. He led the program on the All-Union Radio on the topic of culture, wrote a book called "The Path to Art", which was published in 1968.
The cause of the death of Sergei Lemeshev was heart failure. He died in 1977 at the age of 74. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
