Vladimir Rosing

Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing (Russian: Владимир Серге́евич Розинг) (January 23 [O.S. January 11] 1890 – November 24, 1963), aka Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in England and the United States. In his formative years he experienced the last years of the "golden age" of opera, and he dedicated himself through his singing and directing into breathing new life into opera's outworn mannerisms and methods.

Rosing was considered by many to rank as a singer and performer of the quality of Feodor Chaliapin. In The Perfect Wagnerite, George Bernard Shaw called Chaliapin and Vladimir Rosing "the two most extraordinary singers of the 20th century."

Vladimir Rosing's best known recordings are his performances of Russian art songs by composers such as Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Tcherepnin, Alexander Gretchaninov, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He was the first singer to record a song by Igor Stravinsky: Akahito from Three Japanese Songs.

As a stage director, Rosing championed opera in English, and he attempted to build permanent national opera companies in the United States and England. He directed opera performances "with such acumen and freshness of approach that some writers were tempted to speak of him as a second Reinhardt."

Rosing created his own system of stage movement and acting for singers. It proved very effective in his own productions and he taught it to a new generation of performers.

Rosing was born into an aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia, on January 23, 1890. His father was descended from a Swedish officer captured by Russian forces at the Battle of Poltava. His mother was the granddaughter of a Baltic Baron.

Rosing's parents separated when he was three, and his mother took Vladimir and his two older sisters to live in Switzerland. After four years they returned to Russia to live in Moscow near Rosing's godfather, General Arkady Stolypin, who was Commandant of the Kremlin and father of Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. For a time they lived in the Poteshny Palace at the Kremlin as General Stolypin's guests.

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