Fyodor Shalyapin (1873–1938) was a Russian opera and chamber singer (high bass), the first People's Artist of the Republic. He had a major impact on the world operatic art.
Fyodor Shalyapin was born on February 13 of 1873 in Kazan. The beginning of Shalyapin's artistic career is considered the year of 1889, when he joined V. Serebryakov's drama company as a figurant. On March 29 of 1890, there was the first Shalyapin’s performance; he sang the part of Zaretsky in opera Eugene Onegin by P. Tchaikovsky staged by the Kazan Society of Performing Art Devotees. At different times, he was a soloist of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theaters (and its artistic director in 1918-1921), as well as of the Metropolitan Opera.
The singer's repertoire included about 400 works of different genres, mainly of chamber and folk-song ones. Among the masterpieces of Shalyapin's masterly performance are the parts of Mephistopheles (Faust by Ch. Gounod) and Ruslan (Ruslan and Lyudmila by M. Glinka); The Flea, The Forgotten, The Warlord and The Trepak by M. Mussorgsky, The Night Review by M. Glinka, The Old Corporal by A. Dargomyzhsky, The Prophet by N. Rimsky-Korsakov, The Two Grenadiers by R. Schumann, The Twin by F. Schubert, and others. As to Russian folk songs, he is best known for his Dubinushka.
In the capacity of an opera director, Fyodor Shalyapin staged such operas as Don Quixote by J. Massenet (1910), Khovanshchina by M. Musorgsky (1911), and Don Carlos by G. Verdi (1917); he also acted in the Tsar Ivan Vasilievich the Terrible (based on opera The Maid of Pskov by N. Rimsky-Korsakov, 1915, Russia), and Don Quixote (1932, France).
The postage stamp provides a portrait of Fyodor Shalyapin; the margins of the block (in the form of a gramophone record) feature images of Mephistopheles, Boris Godunov and Basilio embodied by the artist on the opera stage, a theater curtain and an autograph.
In addition to the issue of the postal block, JSC Marka produced First Day Covers and special cancels for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Ufa, and Yalta of the Republic of Crimea, as well as an illustrated envelope with the postal block, a label and a First Day Cover with a cancel for Moscow inside.
Design Artist: V. Khablovsky.
Face value: 150 rubles.
Block size (diam): 100 mm, stamp size in the block: 37×50 mm.
Quantity: 23 thousand blocks.
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