is a keen interest in the production of a new
work. It is all right to enjoy the old things, but one should see life.
The audience at the Metropolitan Opera House reminds me of a family that
lives in the country and won't travel. It is satisfied with the same
view of the same garden forever...."

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapine was born February 13 (February 1, old
style), 1873, in Kazan; he is of peasant descent. It is said that he is
almost entirely self-educated, both musically and intellectually. He
worked for a time in a shoemaker's shop, sang in the archbishop's choir
and, at the age of seventeen, joined a local operetta company. He seems
to have had difficulty in collecting a salary from this latter
organization, and often worked as a railway porter in order to keep
alive. Later he joined a travelling theatrical troupe, which visited the
Caucasus. In 1892, Oussatov, a singer, heard Chaliapine in Tiflis, gave
him some lessons, and got him an engagement.

He made his debut in opera in Glinka's _A Life for the Czar_ (according
to Mrs. Newmarch; my notes tell me that it was Gounod's _Faust_). He
sang at the Summer and Panaevsky theatres in Petrograd in 1894; and the
following year he was engaged at the Maryinsky Theatre, but the
directors did not seem to realize that they had captured one of the
great figures of the contemporary lyric stage, and he was not permitted
to sing very often. In 1896, Mamantov, lawyer and millionaire, paid the
fine which released the bass from the Imperial Opera House, and invited
him to join the Private Opera Company in Moscow, where Chaliapine
immediately proved his worth. He became the idol of the public, and it
was not unusual for those who admired striking impersonations on the
stage to journey from Petrograd to see and hear him. In 1899 he was
engaged to sing at the Imperial Opera in Moscow at sixty thousand
roubles a year. Since then he has appeared in various European capitals,
and in North and South America. He has sung in Milan, Paris, London,
Monte Carlo, and Buenos Aires. During a visit to Milan he married, and
at the time of his New York engagement his family included five
children. The number may have increased.

Chaliapine's repertoire is extensive but, on the whole, it is a strange
repertoire to western Europe and America, consisting, as it does, almost
entirely of Russian operas. In Milan, New York, and Monte Carlo, where
he has appeared with Italian and French companies, his