Zara Dolukhanova
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Zara Dolukhanova (Armenian: Զառա Դոլուխանովա) (5 March 1918 – 5 December 2007) was an Armenian mezzo-soprano and contralto. Her voice was a rare coloratura-mezzo, of unique clarity and unusually wide range (late in life she started to perform the soprano repertoire). Considered one of the great singers of the Soviet era, Dolukhanova was notable for her championing of the operas of Gioachino Rossini. She also often appeared as an alto soloist in oratorios and cantatas by Bach and Handel. In 1966, she was awarded the Lenin Prize.[1][2]
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[edit] Life
Dolukhanova was born Zara Makaryan, in Moscow, to Armenian musical parents - her mother, Elena Makaryan, was a singer, and her father, Aghasi Makaryan, was a flautist, clarinettist and trumpeter. She first studied the piano, then the violin, but finally decided at age 16 that she wanted to study singing. She studied at the Gnessin Institute in Moscow with V. Belyayeva-Tarassevitch. She made her operatic debut in 1938 with the Yerevan Opera as Siebel in Gounod's Faust.
During World War II, Dolukhanova worked at the Opera Theatre of Yerevan and married the composer Alexander Dolukhanian. She left the stage in 1944, when she became a soloist with Moscow Radio and then in 1959 a leading soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.
In the 1970s, she retired from singing and taught at the Gnessin Institute. Among her pupils was the mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina.
She died in Moscow.
[edit] Recordings
- Rossini: L'italiana in Algeri: Zara Dolukhanova, A. Nikitin, Vladimir Zakharov, Georgi Abramov, Anatoly Tikhonov, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Radio Chorus, conductor: Samuil Samosud. Gala Records, 1951.
[edit] References
[edit] Sources
- Warrack, John, and Ewan West (1992). The Oxford Dictionary of Opera. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-869164-5.
[edit] External links
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