Mark Reizen

Mark Osipovich Reizen, also Reisen or Reyzen (Russian: Марк Осипович Рейзен, 3 July [O.S. 21 June] 1895 – November 25, 1992) was a leading Soviet opera singer with a beautiful and expansive bass voice.

Reizen was born into a Jewish family of mine workers in 1895 at Zaitsevo village in Ekaterinoslav province (now Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine). He had four brothers and a sister, and all were trained in music, playing mandolin, guitar, balalaika and accordion. He served as a soldier in the First World War. He studied engineering at the Kharkiv Politechnic, and also voice at the Kharkiv Conservatory with the Italian professor Federico Bugamelli in 1919-1920. He debuted at the Kharkiv Opera in 1921 as Pimen in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and in 1925 moved to the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad. Reizen toured Europe performing in Paris, Berlin, Monte Carlo and London in 1929-1930.

A tall man commanding a strong stage presence, he joined the Bolshoi Theatre in 1930, remaining there as a principal bass until his retirement in 1954. Among his roles were: Ivan Susanin and Ruslan from the Glinka's operas, Don Basilio (The Barber of Seville by Rossini), Mephistopheles (Faust by Gounod), Prince Gremin (Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky), Salieri (Mozart and Salieri), the Viking merchant (Sadko) in operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, the old Gypsy (Aleko by Rachmaninov), Wotan in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs, Konchak (Prince Igor by Borodin), Philip II and Procida in Verdi's operas, and so on. He became a particularly memorable interpreter of Boris and Dosifey in the operas of Mussorgsky (Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, respectively).

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