Yelyzaveta Chavdar

Yelyzaveta Chavdar - the famous opera principal of the 50s years of the XX century, people’s artist of the USSR, the award winner at the international competitions in Budapest and Berlin. She was awarded with the orders of Lenin, the order of October Revolution, the order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Ye. I. Chavdar, the famous Ukrainian singer, was one of the leading masters of the vocal art. Her carrier was incredibly dashing and remarkable. Incredibly rich natural abilities, gift for music, splendid abilities to play at the stage, especial hardworking abilities helped her to take the leading position into the star troop of Taras Shevchenko opera and ballet theatre at Kyiv at the stage of which she created 19 leading primo (Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, Rozina in Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, Lyudmila in M. Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, Antonida in M. Glinka’s Ivan Susanin, Marfa in Rimsky-Korsakov's in The Tsar's Bride, Maryltsya in Lysenko’s Taras Bulba, Iolan into Mayboroda’s Milana etc.).

Yelyzaveta Ivanivna Chavdar was born on February 23, 1925 in Odessa into the family of the worker at the electrical power station. After the finishing school she decided to deal with the philosophy and entered Odessa University. But the occasional meeting with Olha Mykolayivna Aslanova, the professor at the Odessa conservatorium, has changed her life perspectives. In a year in 1944 she became the student at Odessa conservatorium. Ye. Chavdar started to study possessing very limited musical preparations, and therefore she worked hard and persistent to receive the knowledge in all the subjects required for the future singer. In two years she was transferred at the fourth course and in 1948 she has graduated from the conservatorium having sung the program in 12 compositions at the graduation exam among which there was the Concert for the voice with the orchestra of R. Glier. Having received the honors diploma she participated into the summary concert of the best conservatoriums’ graduators of Ukraine. After the splendid performance she was invited to work in Kyiv opera theatre.

None of the artist’s coming into the capital theatre was as bright and triumphant as hers. It was for the first time when lyrical coloratura soprano of the world level sounded from its scene. Singing of Ye. Chavdar fascinated with its virtuosic artistry, perfection and elegance of the execution, with the instrumental clear tone and especially beautiful and unique timbre. Very soon she participated into the principal theatre’s performances. Her name became famous not only in Ukraine but abroad as well.

The concert performances of Yelyzaveta Chavdar were unforgettable as well. They were perfectly organized in the topic and stylistics and they had the incredible success. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, GDR, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Greece, India, China and other countries where she presented the native vocal art applauded her. The concerts of the “Ukrainian nightingale” were the extraordinary event of the musical life at given countries. Her voice was compared to the sounding of the best Stradivari’s violin and her execution was considered the sample one.

The singer’s repertoire comprised the romances of the Ukrainian (Kosenko, Kos-Anatolsky, Kropivnytsky, Meytus, Lysenko, Nadenenko, Stestenko, Tsehlyar...), Russian (Alyabyev, Vlasov, Brusilovskiy, Glier, Dargomizhskiy, Kyuyi, Rimskiy-Korsakov, Chaivivskiy, Cherepnin...), foreign (Bize, Vekerlen, Gorgiani, Tosti, Lecoc, Markezi, Marcello, Rossini, Chopin, Straus...) composers and poets as well as folk songs and operas’ arias.

Having finished the singer’s career, Yelyzaveta Ivanivna was the head of the department of solo singing at Kyiv Conservatorium for almost 10 years, among her students there were the following: N. Biorro (Kravtsova), V. Lukiyanets, L. Kolos, A. Solovyanenko, L. Davimko etc. Ye. Chavdar was the constant juryman of International Competition named after P. I. Chaykovskiy, All Union competition named after M. I. Glinka, the Republic competition named after M. V. Lysenko and opened the way to the high art to many talented singers.

The name of Yelyzaveta Chavdar takes the honorable place among the world famous names as Maria Kallas, Marcella Sembrich, Sigrid Arnoldson, Luisa Tetrazzini etc.