George Cehanovsky

George Cehanovsky (14 April 1892 - 25 March 1986) was an American baritone and language coach of Russian birth who had a close association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for six decades. At the time of his death in 1986, he held the record for the most performances given by any artist at the Met with 2394 performances; a number which has since been surpassed by only tenor Charles Anthony and conductor James Levine.

Born in Saint Petersburg, Cehanovsky was the son of Russian gentry. He studied at the Russian Naval Academy before serving as an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy during World War I. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917 he resigned his naval commission and began studying singing seriously with his mother, Vera Cehanovska, a violinist, pianist and voice teacher. He made his professional debut as a concert singer in Saint Petersburg in 1920, and spent the next couple years performing with a small opera company in that city. In 1922 Vera, concerned with the political state of her country, fled Russia through Tiflis and ultimately settled in Istanbul, Turkey. Cehanovsky joined her later that year and began performing with small opera companies in Turkey soon after.

A performance for the American Red Cross in the autumn of 1922 led to Cehanovsky's acquaintance with the wife of the American Ambassador to Turkey. She befriended him and arranged for both him and his mother to get visas to the United States. The pair arrived in New York City on December 6, 1922. After arriving they contacted one of Vera's former pupils, Thalia Sabanieeva, then a leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera. She helped Cehanovsky get auditions with several companies, and he soon obtained work touring with Fortune Gallo's San Carlo Opera Company, mainly in small to midsized roles, from 1923 to 1926.

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