ake his entrances
in a certain way; he was ordered to stand in a certain place on the
stage. Whenever he attempted an innovation the stage director said,
"Don't do that." Young singer though he was, he rebelled and asked, "Why
not?" And the reply always came, "You must follow the tradition of the
part. Monsieur Chose and Signor Cosi have always done thus and so, and
you must do likewise." "But I feel differently about the role,"
protested the bass. However, it was not until he went to Moscow that he
was permitted to break with tradition. From that time on he began to
elaborate his characterizations, assisted, he admits, by Russian
painters who gave him his first ideas about costumes and make-up. He
once told me that his interpretation of a part was never twice the same.
He does not study his roles in solitude, poring over a score, as many
artists do. Rather, ideas come to him when he eats or drinks, or even
when he is on the stage. He depends to an unsafe degree--unsafe for
other singers who may be misled by his success--on inspiration to carry
him through, once he begins to sing. "When I sing a character I am that
character; I am no longer Chaliapine. So whatever I do must be in
keeping with what the character would do." This is true to so great an
extent that you may take it for granted, when you see Chaliapine in a
new role, that he will envelop the character with atmosphere from his
first entrance, perhaps even without the aid of a single gesture. His
entrance on horseback in _Ivan the Terrible_ is a case in point. Before
he has sung a note he has projected the personality of the cruel czar
into the auditorium.

"As an actor," writes Mrs. Newmarch in "The Russian Opera," "his
greatest quality appears to me to be his extraordinary gift of
identification with the character he is representing. Shaliapin (so
does Mrs. Newmarch phonetically transpose his name into Roman letters)
does not merely throw himself into the part, to use a phrase commonly
applied to the histrionic art. He seems to disappear, to empty himself
of all personality, that Boris Godunov or Ivan the Terrible may be
reincarnated for us. While working out his own conception of a part,
unmoved by convention or opinion, Shaliapin neglects no accessory study
that can heighten the realism of his interpretation. It is impossible to
see him as Ivan the Terrible, or Boris, without realizing that he is
steeped in the history of those periods, which live again at