The divine, velvety, enveloping bass was possessed by Ivan Petrov, without knowing it. And to the audience’s happiness, this amazing voice was discovered in a regular high school, by a simple singing teacher, for which he bowed a lot, otherwise we probably would have known not the singer Ivan Petrov, but the volleyball player Ivan Krause.
Childhood and youth
Ivan Ivanovich was born in a family of Germans long ago Russified by the name of Krause in Irkutsk in 1920. The family was homely musical. Everyone sang - both the father, who had bass, and the mother. Ivanes in the family were three generations of men. In the Civil War, Krause-father fought along with the revolutionary P.P. Postyshev, who was subsequently in the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) Next to Stalin. Such companionship became fatal for the father of young Ivan, his father came under Stalinist repression and disappeared forever in the camps.
In the thirties, the whole family moved to Moscow, brothers and sisters studied singing with the tenor A.M. Labinsky, who, before the revolution, performed on the stage with Chaliapin. But Ivan did not study vocals, he was attracted to sports, especially since his height was considerable - 190 cm. He played in the Lokomotiv team and was very passionate about sports. But somehow at a break in school, he sang a part of Gremin from Eugene Onegin, and a singing teacher heard him. He invited a seventeen-year-old boy to sing with musical accompaniment. Since then, Ivan Petrov has become an invariable participant in school activities.
At the music school
Under pressure from friends, Ivan Krause in 1938 entered the music school, where he was lucky with a teacher who was Chaliapin’s stage partner. Having taken up vocals and worked tirelessly on the upper notes of the first octave, difficult for bass, he was simultaneously interested in acting.
For this he attended theatrical performances of drama theaters, taking a closer look at the actions of the actors. The fruits of such works made themselves felt - he was invited to work at the Philharmonic with I.S. Kozlovsky. But the war began.
Front concerts
First, the Philharmonic was evacuated to Central Asia, and then went on a tour, which performed opera singers with concert programs on the Bryansk and Volkhov fronts.
At the forefront, more than three hundred concerts were given. The conditions are the most inappropriate to preserve the voice - frost, cold.
The Bolshoi Theatre
In 1943, he, a young singer, was invited to audition at the Bolshoi Theater. The competition ended with the fact that he was accepted into the troupe. It was the heyday of the theater. Famous basses, such opera singers as A. S. Pirogov, M.O. Reisen and many others. But Krause had parts so far small, age-related, requiring not only vocals, but also acting. After the war, Stalin turned his attention to him and suggested that the performer change his name. So Ivan Petrov appeared.
Where else did the singer perform
For 27 years, all the leading parties were performed at the Bolshoi. But trips abroad were countless. The most precious memory is a meeting with the granddaughter of Charles Gounod, when an unforgettable sincere compliment was heard that the composer had this image of Mephistopheles. It was in Paris, in the opera Garnier, which the Russians call the Grand Opera. And the second time, another 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 Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin that she gave him a concert ring of her great grandfather.
He is now on Novinsky Boulevard in Moscow at the F. I. Chaliapin Museum. Petrov Ivan Ivanovich carefully kept him, but never decided to put it on. With the tour, Ivan Ivanovich traveled the whole world. And everywhere was received with enthusiasm. He was awarded the title of Honorary Member of the
Opera Garnier in Paris. He became a laureate of the Golden Orpheus Prize and the Thomas Edison Prize, because he has recorded over ninety records with romances and arias from operas. Ivan Petrov, a world-class singer, did not forget to go on tour in the cities of his homeland. In 1959 he was awarded the title of
People's Artist of the USSR, and later he was awarded the
Orders of Lenin and
Friendship of Peoples. Ivan Petrov starred in the role of Gremin in the opera film "Eugene Onegin." This film was a huge success, and the charming Gremin was not inferior to Onegin in anything.
Hobbies
In addition to the theater, radio and television, the singer was interested in photography, technology, including cars, with which he masterfully controlled and could prepare himself for a technical inspection. In the country, he easily took up an ax and other tools.
With a capital letter, swagger was alien to him - in him was an attentive and benevolent attitude towards people. Ivan Petrov passed away on December 26, 2003 at the age of 83 and was buried at the Kuntsevsky cemetery in Moscow.