Sofia Preobrazhenskaya |
Sofia Preobrazhenskaya
Sofia Petrovna Preobrazhenskaya was born in St. Petersburg on September 14 (27), 1904 in a musical family. Father – priest Peter Preobrazhensky graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the composition class, played the violin, cello, piano. Mother sang in the choir of A.A. Arkhangelsky. My father’s brother was a soloist at the Bolshoi Theater and performed leading tenor roles. The singer’s sister, a graduate of the Conservatory in piano, was an accompanist at the Kirov Theater.
In 1923, Preobrazhenskaya entered the Conservatory in the class of IV Ershov. The musical talent, high voice data of the girl immediately attracted the attention of the leaders of the educational institution. At one of the exams, the director of the Conservatory A.K. Glazunov noted that the student Preobrazhenskaya has “a big voice of a beautiful soft timbre and a subtle artistic performance.”
The singer’s debut took place in 1926 on the stage of the Opera Studio as Lyubasha (The Tsar’s Bride by N. Rimsky-Korsakov). In 1928 Preobrazhenskaya was admitted to the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre. Here, the singer, the owner of a warm and deep mezzo-soprano in all registers, created masterpieces of opera stage art. Heroic and dramatic roles were close to her: Marfa in M. Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, Lyubasha in N. Rimsky Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, John in P. Tchaikovsky’s Maid of Orleans, Azuchen in G. Verdi’s Il trovatore. Preobrazhenskaya – the actress inimitably played genre parts: the Countess in P. Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades”, Octavian in R. Strauss’s “Rose Knight”, Siebel in S. Gounod’s “Faust” and many others.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the singer gave solo concerts in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic, where Soviet listeners first got acquainted with the arias of Bach, Handel, and the works of old masters.
On January 19, 1958, the jubilee performance of The Queen of Spades, dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Preobrazhenskaya’s stage activity, took place at the Kirov Theater. The following year, the singer left the opera stage, but for almost a decade her voice sounded in concert halls.
Preobrazhenskaya – People’s Artist of the USSR, laureate of State Prizes, professor at the Leningrad Conservatory. She passed away in 1966. She was buried in St. Petersburg, in the Necropolis “Literary Bridges”. Her tombstone was created by a wonderful master of sculptural portrait – M.T.Litovchenko.
A. Alekseev
