Petrov, Osip (Afanasievich)

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Petrov, Osip (Afanasievich)

Petrov, Osip (Afanasievich), celebrated Russian bass; b. Elizavetgrad, Nov. 15, 1807; d. St. Petersburg, March 11, 1878. He joined the Zhurakhovsky opera troupe and made his debut in Cavos’s The Cossack Poet in Elizavetgrad (1826); received instruction from Cavos. In 1830, Lebedev, the director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera, heard him sing with an inferior company at a fair in Kursk, and immediately engaged him. Petrov made his debut in St. Petersburg as Sarastro that same year. The enormous compass of his voice, its extraordinary power and beautiful quality, combined with consummate histrionic skill, secured for him recognition as one of the greatest of Russian bassos. He appeared on the stage for the last time on March 10, 1878, on the eve of his death. He created the roles of Susanin in Glinka’s Life for the Czar (1836), Ruslan in Ruslan and Ludmila (1842), the Miller in Dargomyzhsky’s Rusalka (1856), and Varlaam in Mussorgsky’s Boris Go-dunov (1874).

Bibliography

E. Lastotchkina, O. P. (Moscow, 1950).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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