Ivan Petrov. To be remembered and listened to

The divine, velvety, enveloping bass was possessed by Ivan Petrov, himself not knowing about it. And fortunately listeners, this amazing voice was opened in an ordinary high school, a simple singing teacher, for which he had a big bow, otherwise we might know not the singer Ivan Petrov, but the volleyball player Ivan Krause.

Childhood and youth

Ivan Ivanovich was born into a family of long-ago Russified Germans named Krause in Irkutsk in 1920. The family was a home-like musical. Everyone sang - and his father, who had a bass, and his mother. There were three generations of men in the family. During the Civil War, Krause the father fought along with the revolutionary PP Postyshev, who later was in the Central Committee of the RCP (B) alongside Stalin. Such fellowship became fatal for the father of young Ivan, his father fell under Stalin's repression and disappeared forever in the camps.

In the thirties the whole family moved to Moscow, brothers and sisters learned to sing with tenor AM Labinsky, who before the revolution performed on the stage together with Shalyapin. And Ivan did not study vocal, he was attracted to sports, especially since his height was considerable - 190 cm. He played in the team "Locomotive" and was very keen on sports. But somehow at the break in school he sang the part of Gremin from "Eugene Onegin", and he was heard by the singing teacher. He invited a seventeen-year-old boy to sing with a musical accompaniment. Since then, Ivan Petrov has become an invariable participant in school amateur performance.

In the music school

Under the pressure of friends Ivan Krause in 1938 entered the music school, where he was lucky with the teacher who was Chaliapin's partner on the stage. Holding the vocal and working tirelessly on the upper notes of the first octave, difficult for the bass, he was simultaneously interested in acting. For this he attended theatrical performances of drama theaters, looking to the actors' actions. The fruits of such works made themselves felt - he was invited to work in the Philharmonic with IS Kozlovsky. But the war began.

Front-line concerts

At first the philharmonic society was evacuated to Central Asia, and then went touring, which was performed by opera singers with concert programs on the Bryansk and Volkhov fronts. On the front lines, more than 300 concerts were given. Conditions most unsuitable for preserving the voice - frosts, cold.

The Bolshoi Theatre

In 1943, he, a young singer, was invited to audition for the Bolshoi Theater. The competition ended with the fact that he was accepted into the troupe. This was the heyday of the theater. In it, the parties were performed by famous basses, such opera singers as A. S. Pirogov, M.O. Reisen and many others. But Krause had parties as small, age, demanding not only vocals, but also acting skills. After the war Stalin addressed his voice and suggested that the singer change his surname. So Ivan Petrov appeared.

Where else did the singer perform

For 27 years in the Bolshoi were all the leading parties. And travel abroad was not found. The most precious memory is the meeting with the granddaughter of Charles Gounod, when an unforgettable, sincere compliment was heard, that the composer imagined Mephistopheles exactly that way. It was in Paris, in the opera Garnier, which the Russians call the Grand Opera. And the second time a significant meeting took place in Milan, where the performance of Boris Godunov took place. Ivan Petrov made such a great impression on the granddaughter of Fedor Ivanovich Chaliapin that she gave him a concert ring of his great grandfather. He is now on Novinsky Boulevard in Moscow in the museum of FI Shalyapin. Petrov Ivan Ivanovich cherished it carefully, but he never ventured to put it on. With tours Ivan Ivanovich traveled the whole world. And everywhere he was received with enthusiasm. He was awarded the title of honorary member of the opera Garnier in Paris. He won the Golden Orpheus Prize and Thomas Edison Award, because he recorded over ninety records with romances and arias from operas. Do not forget Ivan Petrov, a world-class singer, touring for the cities of his homeland. In 1959 he was awarded the title People's Artist of the USSR, later he was awarded the Order of Lenin and Friendship of Peoples. Ivan Petrov starred in the role of Gremin in the film opera "Eugene Onegin." This film was a huge success, and the charming Gremin was not inferior to anything on Onegin.

Hobbies

In addition to the theater, radio and television, the singer was interested in photography, technology, including cars, with which he masterfully managed and could prepare himself for the inspection. At the dacha, he easily took up the ax and other tools.

A man with a capital letter was alien to swagger - he had an attentive and friendly attitude towards people. Ivan Petrov died on December 26, 2003 at the age of 83 years and is buried in the Kuntsevo Cemetery in Moscow.