«Russian tenor Solomon,
the hostage of his century»
In 2025, the publishing house “Vremya” (Moscow) will present a romanticized biopic “Russian Tenor Solomon. The Hostage of his Century”, written by the singer’s granddaughter Nadia Sikorsky. Here is how the author presents her book.
When you share your life with someone every day for many years, you think that you know everything about that person, and therefore you can do without additional questions. I thought so too, having lived for twenty-one years in the same flat with my grandfather, Solomon Khromchenko (1907-2002), a very popular tenor of the Bolshoi Theatre in the 1930s-1950s. We lived in the Bolshoi Theatre’s cooperative house on Gorky Street in Moscow. Among our neighbours were pianist Emil Gilels, ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and conductor Kirill Kondrashin, to mention just a few of world-class Soviet musicians. I caught them already at an advanced age, but thanks to them, genius from childhood became commonplace for me, and professional perfectionism remained the norm.
My grandfather lived a long life that was inextricably linked to music. His main goal until his last day was ‘to be at the level of the Bolshoi Theatre’, where he served from 1934 to 1956, that is, the golden period from the artistic point of view and the most difficult – from all other. After that he taught at the Gnessin Institute for over twenty years, eventually becoming a full professor. In the early 1990s we separated: I went to work for UNESCO in Paris, and he, at the age of 85, unexpectedly for himself – went to Israel, where he was immediately offered a professorship at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. However, he returned to Moscow to die.
After his death, I discovered in his desk two identical folders, obviously left in plain sight by him on purpose. One – puffy, swollen, the second thin. When I untied the ribbon on the first one, I found, folded by years, programmes of performances with Solomon Khromchenko’s participation, of the opening of the Actors’ Club in Moscow in 1938, a concert in the Kremlin in May 1945, newspaper clippings, documents, photographs and reviews, methodological works written during the years of teaching… In the second one there was a single newspaper clipping: an article in the newspaper ‘Soviet Artist’ from February 1948, signed by grandfather. I wouldn’t have paid much attention to it if it hadn’t been for the paper clip attached to it, on which his hand had written: ‘Nadia! Please try to understand and not to judge too harshly’.
It took me more than twenty years to begin to understand – I had to grow up, get my own experiences and understand a lot. But when I did start, I realised that what I had in front of me was a very interesting archive material left to me by a person who, together with the Bolshoi Theatre, had lived through such a difficult century of Russian history: on the stage of this most beautiful theatre in the world and ‘through it’ every important event in the USSR took place one way or another.
In my opinion, these materials, as well as everything that I was able to find in the archives of the Bolshoi Theatre and other documentary sources, in the memories of my grandfather’s peers, in the stories of their children and grandchildren, are of interest to a wide audience – to all those who want to know more about the history of the USSR and its musical culture, as well as to professional vocalists, since my grandfather’s methodical works, devoted to his work on the leading parts of the tenor repertoire, are a unique teaching aid.
The romanticized biography of Solomon Khromchenko, who was described in an obituary published in Russian newspapers as ‘the patriarch of Russian musical culture’, is written in the first person. The reader lives with the narrator through his life, which began in a small Ukrainian village and led to the Bolshoi Theatre. He gets acquainted with his teachers – professors of German origin M. M. Engel-Kron in Kiev and K. N. Dorliak in Moscow; he discovers Moscow in the early 1930s; he participates in the First All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians in 1933; he auditions for the Bolshoi Theatre in 1934; year after year he learns, surrounded by outstanding colleagues, the entire repertoire of the lyric tenor – the level of Solomon Khromchenko’s talent is evidenced by a line on his page on the Bolshoi Theatre website: ‘He had the most beautifully timbred voice in the Bolshoi Theatre’.
Together with the narrator, the reader experiences the terrible 1930s; observes the persecution of Shostakovich and other composers; attends the rehearsals of The Valkyrie, directed by Sergei Eisenstein – a production almost unknown today; catches the outbreak of war in Moscow and accompanies the Bolshoi Theatre to the evacuation to Kuibyshev; gives concerts at the front as part of the artistic brigade; attends the first performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony in 1942; together with baritone Alexei Ivanov, participates in 1943 in the auditions of all 208 versions of the new national anthem of the USSR in front of the government commission and Stalin himself; participates in the first post-war reception and concert in the Kremlin on 24 May 1945; witnesses the arrival in Moscow of Israel’s first ambassador, Golda Meir, and the terrible ‘doctors’ case’; the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the events that followed; attends a performance of Boris Godunov on 5 March 1953, the day of Stalin’s death; and becomes one of the first listeners to Dmitri Shostakovich’s cycle “From Jewish Folk Poetry” and his Thirteenth Symphony. And so on until 1992.
The personal experience of the protagonist raises the questions of the place of culture in society, of relations between artists and the authorities, of state anti-Semitism, and, most importantly, of the art of surviving in dramatic circumstances while preserving one’s dignity.
In a short epilogue I tell about the last years of my grandfather’s life: the reasons for his departure to Israel and his return to Moscow, the celebration of his 90th birthday in Jerusalem and Moscow, and his last public performance – at my wedding, where, at the age of 92, he so easily took the upper ‘B’. Thus passed his century, the century of Solomon.
The narrative is illustrated with archive photos and rare documents, and QR codes will allow the reader to easily go to a specially created website in memory of Solomon Khromchenko and listen to his beautiful voice.
The book is available here:
Solomon Markovich Khromchenko with his granddaughter Nadia
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