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Oda Slobodskaya
Oda Abramovna Slobodskaya (Russian: Ода Абрамовна Слободская, 28 November OS/10 December 1888 NS – 30 July 1970) was a Russian operatic soprano who became a British citizen.
Slobodskaya was born on 28 November 1888 in Vilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania). She was one of seven children. She won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second-hand clothes shop.
Knowing she had a good voice, in 1907 she applied for an audition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Having no classical repertoire she sang the simple songs she had learned as a child. Despite this lack of sophistication, her vocal potential was immediately apparent. The Director, Glazunov, and Natalya Iretskaya (the most important Russian singing tutor and herself a pupil of Pauline Viardot) accepted her and awarded her a scholarship for nine years' study. As a student, she performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony under Sergei Koussevitzky.
In 1916 Slobodskaya made her debut, as Lisa in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades the Mariinsky Theatre. She sang with the company for the next five years and performed many of the principal soprano parts of the Russian repertory as well as Sieglinde, Marguerite in Faust, Elisabeth de Valois, and Aida. The revolution having broken out, she was obliged to join other singers on obligatory tours to factories and farms to entertain the workers and to be fed. She sang with the bass Fyodor Chaliapin.
In 1921 Slobodskaya fled from Russia to Berlin where she was soon invited to sing. Success there brought a call from Sergei Diaghilev to join him in Paris, France, to star in the premiere of Stravinsky's opera Mavra in 1922. Chaliapin then invited her to be principal soprano in the company he was forming to tour Western Europe and she sang with him in Paris.
The impresario Rabinoff organised for Slobodskaya to tour in North and South America as star soloist with The Ukrainian Chorus, and while in America she made a successful solo debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, led by Alexander Koshetz. But, as a displaced Russian living abroad when appreciation of the Russian repertoire was minimal, Slobodskaya had difficulty finding a good manager. To augment her classical career, she created a parallel identity in vaudeville, singing operatic arias and good quality ballads under the pseudonym "Odali Careno".[citation needed] She applied for American citizenship in 1922 and remained in the USA for nearly seven years.
In 1930 she was booked, as Odali Careno, for two weeks at the London Palladium. She had a great success, was immediately re-engaged, and was later twice invited to star in Royal Command Performances before King George V and Queen Mary. She also re-established her classical career, appearing at the Lyceum with Chaliapin as Natasha in Alexander Dargomïzhsky's Rusalka. In 1932, following her marriage to Captain Raymond Pelly, England became her permanent home.
The same year (1932) she made her Covent Garden debut as Fevronia in a concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, and as Venus in Tannhauser with Sir Thomas Beecham. She again sang Fevroniya, in Italian, at La Scala, Milan in 1933, and sang Palmyra in Thomas Beecham's production of Frederick Delius's Koanga at Covent Garden in 1935. In 1936 she took part in a Russian season at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires and sang Khivrya in Modest Moussorgsky's Fair at Sorochintsï at the Savoy and on an English tour in 1941 and subsequent years.
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Oda Slobodskaya
Oda Abramovna Slobodskaya (Russian: Ода Абрамовна Слободская, 28 November OS/10 December 1888 NS – 30 July 1970) was a Russian operatic soprano who became a British citizen.
Slobodskaya was born on 28 November 1888 in Vilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania). She was one of seven children. She won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second-hand clothes shop.
Knowing she had a good voice, in 1907 she applied for an audition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Having no classical repertoire she sang the simple songs she had learned as a child. Despite this lack of sophistication, her vocal potential was immediately apparent. The Director, Glazunov, and Natalya Iretskaya (the most important Russian singing tutor and herself a pupil of Pauline Viardot) accepted her and awarded her a scholarship for nine years' study. As a student, she performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony under Sergei Koussevitzky.
In 1916 Slobodskaya made her debut, as Lisa in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades the Mariinsky Theatre. She sang with the company for the next five years and performed many of the principal soprano parts of the Russian repertory as well as Sieglinde, Marguerite in Faust, Elisabeth de Valois, and Aida. The revolution having broken out, she was obliged to join other singers on obligatory tours to factories and farms to entertain the workers and to be fed. She sang with the bass Fyodor Chaliapin.
In 1921 Slobodskaya fled from Russia to Berlin where she was soon invited to sing. Success there brought a call from Sergei Diaghilev to join him in Paris, France, to star in the premiere of Stravinsky's opera Mavra in 1922. Chaliapin then invited her to be principal soprano in the company he was forming to tour Western Europe and she sang with him in Paris.
The impresario Rabinoff organised for Slobodskaya to tour in North and South America as star soloist with The Ukrainian Chorus, and while in America she made a successful solo debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, led by Alexander Koshetz. But, as a displaced Russian living abroad when appreciation of the Russian repertoire was minimal, Slobodskaya had difficulty finding a good manager. To augment her classical career, she created a parallel identity in vaudeville, singing operatic arias and good quality ballads under the pseudonym "Odali Careno".[citation needed] She applied for American citizenship in 1922 and remained in the USA for nearly seven years.
In 1930 she was booked, as Odali Careno, for two weeks at the London Palladium. She had a great success, was immediately re-engaged, and was later twice invited to star in Royal Command Performances before King George V and Queen Mary. She also re-established her classical career, appearing at the Lyceum with Chaliapin as Natasha in Alexander Dargomïzhsky's Rusalka. In 1932, following her marriage to Captain Raymond Pelly, England became her permanent home.
The same year (1932) she made her Covent Garden debut as Fevronia in a concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, and as Venus in Tannhauser with Sir Thomas Beecham. She again sang Fevroniya, in Italian, at La Scala, Milan in 1933, and sang Palmyra in Thomas Beecham's production of Frederick Delius's Koanga at Covent Garden in 1935. In 1936 she took part in a Russian season at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires and sang Khivrya in Modest Moussorgsky's Fair at Sorochintsï at the Savoy and on an English tour in 1941 and subsequent years.
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