Maria Maksakova, Sr.

Maria Maksakova, Sr.
Maria Maksakova as Carmen
Background information
Birth name	Maria Petrovna Sidorova
Born	April 8 [O.S. March 26] 1902 Astrakhan, Russian Empire
Died	11 August 1974(1974-08-11) (aged 72) Moscow, USSR
Occupation(s)	Opera singer (mezzo-soprano)
Years active	1923-1974

Maria Petrovna Maksakova (Мария Петровна Максакова, née: Sidorova; April 8, 1902, Astrakhan, Russian Empire – August 11, 1974, Moscow, USSR) was a Soviet opera singer (mezzo-soprano), a leading soloist in the Bolshoi Theater (1923-1953), who enjoyed great success in the 1920s and 1930s, in the times often referred to as the Golden Age of the Soviet opera. Maria Maksakova, the three times laureate of the Stalin's Prize (1946, 1949, 1951), was assignated the People's Artist of the USSR in 1971. She is the mother of actress Lyudmila Maksakova and the grandmother of Maria Maksakova, Jr.^[1]

Biography

Maria was born in the city of Astrakhan, one of six children^[2] of Pyotr Sidorov, an executive manager of the Volga Shipping company and a wealthy man.^[3] This large family's well-being ended with his death and Maria joined a local church choir at the age of 10, just to help her 27-year old mother make a living.^[2] There her gift was quickly noticed. "I educated myself. Inscribed scales upon my room's wall and was singing them days on end. In a two months time I was treated as a 'scholar' by peers and soon got much respect from the seniors as a full-blown chorine who could read music freely," she remembered. In a year's time Maria became a lead in the alto section of the choir where she sang until 1917. It was here that her most prominent qualities of the vocal technique (e.g. flawless intoning, unique way of carrying a note) started to take shape. After the Revolution, in late 1917, Maria Sidorova joined the Astrakhan musical college to study the piano. Having no instrument at her home, she had to stay at school to practice literally day and night. In early 1918, she started studying vocal, first as a contralto. As one of the best in the class, she was often sent on obligatory 'tours' to sing for the Red Army soldiers and sailors. "I've had success and was extremely proud of it," she later wrote. One of her new teachers, Smolenskaya (herself a dramatic soprano) a member of the Astrakhan Opera troupe, started to train Maria as soprano, which Maria greatly enjoyed. "With her I studied for a year. Then the Astrakhan theater has been moved to Tsaritsyn and I decided to join its troupe, so as to go on studying with my pedagogue," the singer later recalled.^[1] "She mastered a professional vocal range, demonstrating flawless precision in intonations and perfect sense of rhythm. What was most attractive in the young singer's performances was her musical and verbal expressiveness, her wholehearted involvement in lyrical content of a piece. All this, of course, was still in embryonic state, but an experienced tutor could find here vast possibilities for further development," wrote Mikhail Lvov in his 1947 biography.^[1]

Success

In the summer of 1919 Maria made her theater debut as Olga in Evgeny Onegin (an unlikely choice, considering the line of her later works). In the autumn the famous baritone Max Maksakov came to the theater as a new director (and soloist) and gave her several new roles (in Faust and Rigoletto among others). Admiring the girl's gift, the maestro still saw her flaws in her technique and sent her to Petrograd for further studying. There she met famous Alexander Glazunov, has been consulted by another professor who recognized a lyrical soprano in her and opted for a return, to ask Maksakov for private lessons. The two became close, he proposed, and in 1920 they married, forming a sparkling duet on stage. In 1923 Maria Maksakova came to Moscow, debuted (as Amneris, in Aida, as a last moment substitute for Nadezhda Obukhova, who fell ill)^[2] on the Bolshoi Theatre stage and was invited to join the star-studded troupe.^[1]

Sergey Lemeshev remembered this evening:

…A thin girl, wrapped up in some kind of gown emerged from the left side of the stage, a girl with thin teenager's arms and proudly set head. Her slightly frontal gestures were as natural as if she'd come straight off an Egyptian bas-relief. We [young actors in the theatar gallery] exchanged baffled glances: could this be a teenage ballet dancer, an Amneris' servant? This certainly couldn't be Amneris: we've been used to singers of much more imposing forms and venerable age, engaged in this role. But the girl started to sing and we had to agree: this was Amneris after all. Her lyrical voice flew easily and freely, but what impressed us most was the integrity of her stage persona: for all her young age, she had the stateliness and commanding intonations of a princess who'd been accustomed to having an upper hand. Maksakova's Amneris so fascinated me, I forgot who sang Aida, Radames or Amonasro. What I do remember is that this evening has brought me an encounter with theater's real wonder. All of us fell in love with Amneris. And the public, apparently, too, for the debutante has got a delightful reception.^[4]

Maksakova as Sping Beauty in Snegurochka

"Even then Maksakova fascinated us with her special way with words. Not only clear and crisp was her diction, but she mastered this dramatic expressiveness of phrase, charged with inner strife of passion and jealousy. Besides, Amneris was enchantingly feminine," Lemeshev added.^[4]

Max and Maria Maksakovs moved to Moscow and settled on Dmitrovka street, in a communal flat. According to daughter Lyudmila, "[Max] turned his young wife's life into hard labour. Every day a regular practice at home, with tears; at evening - a performance, late at night - lots of scolding with more tears... He was 33 years older but not for a moment did she come to regret those 15 years she spent with him," Lyudmila Maksakova remembered.^[2] The singer liked working hard. "Maksakova has been driven by all-consuming desire to become a real artist and she was not to be stopped. Once getting a new role, she started working upon it zealously and methodically, step by stepped, and never ceased until she saw the vocals, image development and stage presence being brought to a technically perfect form which could be charged with enormous intellectual and emotional content," colleague Natalia Schpiller recalled.^[1]

Among the theater's stars two proved to be inspirational for the young singer. "Watching the art of Nezhdanova and Sobinov... I was beginning to realize for the first time that even a great master, in order to elevate their character to a peak of expressiveness have to expose their inner exaltation in the most stark, transparent ways; that hidden riches of an artist's inner world should come hand in hand with economy in outward movement," she wrote in autobiography. Strict self-discipline and the high level of responsibility were the two qualities Nezhdanova made a point to insist on the utter importance of, in conversations with her younger colleague.^[1]

In 1925 Maksakova moved to Leningrad's Mariinsky Theatre where she sang parts in Orpheus, Khovanschina (Marfa) and Red Petrograd by Gladkovsky and Prussak (Comrade Dasha), among many others. In 1927 she returned to Bolshoi, where she continued to work as a leading soloist until her retirement 1953. In those years she sung virtually all the leading female parts in the theater's classic repertoire, including Carmen, Marina Mnishek, Aksinya (in The Quiet Don) and Charlotte (in Werther). In Gluck's Orfeo Maksakova featured as both a soloist and a co-director. All the while she regularly embarked upon extensive tours, travelling all over the country with a vast repertoire which included famous arias, Soviet composers' material and her own original interpretations of classic songs and romances by Tchaikovsky, Schubert and others. Maksakova was one of the first Soviet artists who have been allowed in the mid-1930s to perform abroad, giving successful concerts in Turkey and Poland, later Sweden and (after the war) East Germany.^[1]

In 1936 Max Maksakov died. Half a year later Maria married Yakov Davtyan, but this marriage did not last long. On one night her husband, then a Soviet ambassador in Poland, was taken away by the secret police never to be seen or heard of again. Despite insinuations concerning Joseph Stalin's 'special attention' towards the famous singer (the Soviet dictator, who treated Bolshoi as a 'court troupe', allegedly referred to Maksakova as "my Carmen") she spent the late 1930s waiting for the arrest. In 1940 Maksakova gave birth to daughter Lyudmila. She never revealed the identity of her father, not even to her daughter. Lyudmila Maksakova remembered: "Many years later a MAT actor I performed with at the Morocco Film festival revealed to me the name of my father - Aleksander Volkov, singer with Bolshoi. 'Your father did not want to live in the USSR, he crossed the frontline and soon was in the USA where he opened an opera and drama school', this man told me. Now I understood the fear of my mother - not for herself, for me, her only daughter."^[2][5] Of what was to follow, Maksakova's daughter later said in an interview: "Her husband having been incarcerated and executed she was living under the Damocles' sword. A woman with such a 'biography' as hers was not supposed to remain in that kind of a theater."^[1] As the war was coming to and end, things started to look brighter. In 1944 Maksakova won the 1st Prize at the Russian Folk song competition held by the Arts Committee of the USSR. In 1946 she was awarded her first Stalin Prize "for outstanding achievents in opera and the performing arts." Two more were to come, in 1949 and 1951.^[1]

Retirement

In 1953 Maksakova retired or, rather, was informed of her retirement which came as an unpleasant surprise for a singer who kept herself in superb shape, both physically and artistically. Rumours had it, some people at the Bolshoi found it safe to settle old scores with Stalin, her much-feared patron, dead; specifically, the name of Vera Davydova, another famous Soviet soprano, has been mentioned. Lyudmila Maksakova dismissed such rumours, remembering the times when Davydova, settled in a neighbouring dacha, often helped her mother out in difficult times. Davydova herself left warm reminiscences of her great rival. "Maria Petrovna paid great attention to the way she looked. She was beautiful and had excellent figure. Yet she kept herself perfectly fit, with strict diet and regular gymnastic exercises... Our relations were pure and friendly, each respected and valued what the other was doing on stage," Davydova maintained.^[2]

After retirement from the Bolshoi, Maksakova joined Nikolay Osipov's Russian Folk orchestra as a soloist.^[6] With and without it, she continued performing and touring. In 1956 the Bolshoi invited Maksakova back, but her return was a one-off: she performed as Carmen only, just to say farewell to her fans.^[6] Later Maksakova taught vocals at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (where she for many years held the position of a docent), was the head of the Folk vocal school in Moscow, published articles and essays. She was the driving force behind the opening of the Conservatory in her native Astrakhan. Among her proteges was Tamara Milashkina, later an acclaimed singer on her own right. In 1971 she was assignated the People's Artist of the USSR. When daughter Lyudmila called her mother to bring the news, the reply was: "So what? Now all this doesnt matter."^[6] Maria Petrovna Maksakova died in Moscow on August 11, 1974.^[1]

References

External links

• The Maksakova dynasty site (English).
• Мария Максакова. Жизнь на сцене. Maria Maksakova. Life on Stage (autobiography) (pdf).