Mark Reizen

Mark Osipovich Reizen, also Reisen or Reyzen (, – November 25, 1992), PAU, was a leading Soviet opera basso singer.
Life and career.
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 in the two Glinka operas, Don Basilio in "Il barbiere di Siviglia" by Rossini, Mephistopheles in "Faust" by Gounod, Prince Gremin in "Evgeny Onegin" by Tchaikovsky, Salieri in "Mozart and Salieri" and the Viking guest in "Sadko" by Rimsky-Korsakov, the old gypsy in "Aleko" by Rachmaninoff, Wotan in Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungs", Konchak in "Prince Igor" by Borodin, Philip II and Procida in Verdi's two French grand operas, and so on. He became a particularly memorable interpreter of Boris and Dosifey in the two greatest operas of Mussorgsky ("Boris Godunov" and "Khovanshchina").
Reizen was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941, 1949 and 1951.
In 1967 he began teaching, and became a professor at Moscow's Gnessin Institute. He gave an important recital for his 80th birthday, and for his 90th sang Prince Gremin (in "Evgeny Onegin") at the Bolshoi in Moscow in July 1985. On both occasions, his voice sounded remarkably preserved.
Reizen died of a stroke in 1992 in Moscow at the age of 97. A number of his recordings are still available on CD, and film clips of his performances also exist.