Fyodor Shalyapin International Festival of Choral Music opens in Crimea

The 2nd Fyodor Shalyapin International Festival of Choral Music opened on Saturday in Yalta, a famous resort town in the south of the Crimea (Fyodor Shalyapin, 1873-1938, was a prominent Russian opera singer).

The Festival features both professional and amateur choral groups from Russia and Ukraine. They will be giving charity concerts throughout next week in the Yalta Cultural Centre, the organ hall of the Livadia Palace (former summer residence of Russia's last emperor Nicholas II) and the St.Mary Lutheran church.

The Festival will close on 8 November with an award-presentation ceremony and a gala concert.

Fyodor Shalyapin (bass) became world-famous in the parts of Boris Godunov in Modest Musorgsky's "Boris Godunov", Mephistopheles in Guno's "Faust", Ivan the Terrible in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Maid of Pskov", Ivan Susanin in Mikhail Glinka's "Ivan Susanin" (originally, "Life for the Tsar") and other operas. He left Russia in 1922 and never came back. He died in Paris, from where his remains were relocated to Moscow in 1984.