Anton Nikolayev

Russian lyric tenor and opera artist (b. 16/28 January 1836 at Karachev, near Orlov; d. 31 March/13 April 1904 at Karachev), born Anton Nikolayevich Nikolayev (Антон Николаевич Николаев).

Nikolayev studied in Italy, where he made his stage debut in 1861. He later performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, as well as touring in Russia and Europe. After leaving the stage in the late 1870s, he peformed in chamber recitals, and taught singing at the Philharmonic School in Moscow, and later in Kiev and Odessa.

Reviewing one of the singer's recitals in Moscow in 1875, Tchaikovsky remarked that: "Mr Nikolayev's voice is not particularly big, but its timbre is uncommonly pleasant and soft like velvet. His diction is excellent, and he is able to phrase with elegance and sensitivity. He is one of those rare tenors in our times who do not feel the need to scream and blurt out high notes. That is, you won't find him squeezing such notes out of himself whilst his eyes bulge out of their sockets, his cheeks are all puffed up, and his lips are contorted in the most monstrous fashion. No, he belongs precisely to those singers who really do sing without any conspicuous effort and without overdoing it. It is a relief to see, or, rather, to hear that this singer ... is working steadfastly on the development of his vocal gifts as much as he can, in spite of all the highly unfavourable circumstances which a talented singer has to struggle against over here, and which are so often apt to kill any aspirations to self-perfection that such a singer might have

Dedications

In 1875, Tchaikovsky dedicated his song No, I Shall Never Tell — No. 1 of the Six Romances, Op. 28 — to Anton Nikolayev.