Born 1925, Moscow, USSR
Died 2010, Moscow, Russia
Who makes their Met debut at age 72?! That would be the great Soviet mezzo-soprano, Irina Arkhipova, who, after a highly successful 40-year singing career, entered the Russian Hall of Fame. She also had a small planet (#4424) named after her!
Having first studied architecture, Arkhipova entered the Moscow Conservatory late, at age 28, and made her Bolshoi debut three years later (1956). For the next 20 years, she dominated the mezzo repertoire, singing not only roles in Russian operas but also those by Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, Massenet, Mascagni, and Gluck.
Travel visas during the Cold War (1947-1991) were hard to come by, and Arkhipova first appeared in the West during the 1960-61 season as Bizet’s Carmen at the San Carlo Opera in Naples and in Rome. Watch her here in the final scene of Carmen in a live performance at the Bolshoi in 1958, with Mario Del Monaco chewing up the scenery in the old Italian style. (He sings this French opera in Italian, while the rest of the cast sings in Russian.)
In 1963 she made a sensational tour of Japan, and in subsequent years performed at La Scala and in Paris with the Bolshoi. Her first performance in the U.S. took place in San Francisco in 1972 as Amneris in Verdi’s Aida. Here she is in the Judgment Scene of that opera, live from the Bolshoi in 1962, with Ivan Petrov as Ramfis.
Covent Garden got to hear her as Azucena in 1975, and not again until 1988, by which time (at age 63 and after 34 years of singing) her voice was rather “muted,” as one critic wrote.
Nonetheless, at the age of 72, Arkhipova made a belated Metropolitan Opera debut in March 1997 as Filipyevna in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
Arkhipova’s vocal range permitted her to sing the highest mezzo roles to the lowest contralto roles. Her portrayals were authoritative, sharply characterized, and always wonderfully musical. She sang over 40 roles, recorded over 20 operas and several solo albums, selling millions of copies, and was married to Russian tenor Vladislav Pyavko.
Here you can watch the two singing a scene from Moussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, Marfa being one her most famous Russian roles.
Irina Arkhipova died of heart failure at the age of 84.