Boris Godounov (excerpts; live recording with Chaliapin)

"Some kind person has posted on youtube the greatest vocal recording of all time. This is Fyodor Chaliapin singing Anton Rubinstein's "Persian Love Song" in 1931 - when Chaliapin was already 58 years old. ... Here is an artist - admired by Stanislavsky as an exemplary actor -- who transformed everything he touched. ... To savor his Boris, forget the studio recordings. The version to hear is the one recorded live at Covent Garden in 1928. Last fall, lecturing for the NEA Music Critics Institute, I had occasion to compare Chaliapin (in Russian) and Hans Hotter (in German) as the dying tsar. We spent 15 or 20 minutes listening - repeatedly -- to these artists sing two lines: 'Farewell my son, I am dying' and 'Forgive me.' Both readings - one as a crazed Slav, the other a noble Wotan -- beggared description. Hotter became an opera singer upon encountering Chaliapin in Prague. Singing actors" (Joseph Horowitz, "The Greatest Vocal Recording of All Time, Etc.," The Unanswered Question, 1/6/11).
View catalog record here!