There are few, if any, infant prodigies in classical singing. Unlike violinists or pianists, star-quality singers usually blaze forth late in their third or even fourth decades. They can come from unlikely backgrounds, and even other careers. Lawrence Tibbett was an actor, Rosa Ponselle played vaudeville, Lorraine Hunt Lieberman was a gigging violist. You can be a great singer and not know it; then one day, singing takes over your life.
So imagine a kid arriving in America in 1991 with no musical training and speaking no English. A young man who nine years ago was farming hubbard squash, building furniture and conducting a church choir in rural New England. A guy who only last year walked off with all (well, most of) the glittering prizes for singing that his adopted nation has to offer. His day has come.
That singer would be Moscow-born baritone Anton Belov, who aced the 2002 George London Foundation for Singers, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Eastern Region, and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. In 2001, he won the Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation International Vocal Competition.
“For me, it’s easier to win competitions than to get a professional gig,” said Belov, chatting with me on the phone from the Vocal Arts office at Juilliard, where he is an Artist Diploma candidate at the Opera Center. “I’m looking around for more competitions! I do have a knack, but sometimes I don’t make it to the second round. You never know.”
Being flashy enough to win the big competitions does not necessarily go hand in hand with a heart throbbing with passion or soul a-quiver with poetry, but there is much more than flash in Belov’s pan.
I ought to know. I heard Belov sing Mussorgsky’s “Songs and Dances of Death” in April of 2000, when he was an undergraduate at New England Conservatory of Music. His performance—no, I can’t even call it a performance, it was more like an exorcism, a man possessed—was terrifying.
“Yes,” he concurs, “I felt that the songs took me over. When I was onstage that night I didn’t feel anything. I was not aware of ‘the voice.’ I just did it.”
“Like an athlete getting into The Zone?” I asked.
“Yes, exactly. I was in that place. I worked on the poetry with Ernst Shteynberg, a wonderful Russian coach. He told me he always had nightmares after we would work on it together.”
“I have a taste for truth,” says Belov. “What Stanislavsky called ‘Stage Truth.’ When I sang the duet from Il Tabarro with this wonderful soprano, Yun Mi Joeng in scenes class at NEC—there’s something about that role—that was a breakthrough for me. The director broke down crying in a rehearsal, and when we performed it there wasn’t a dry eye anywhere. That… that is what I want.”
The director, NEC professor Patricia Weinman, says, “that Tabarro duet was one of the most beautiful things I ever heard. You know how you do scenes and more scenes, and then you witness something—absolutely stunning!”
NEC professor and diction guru John Moriarty concurs. “Have you heard him sing the aria from (Rachmaninov’s) ‘Aleko?’ He just chews it up. He’s got the voice and the brains—of course you need luck, too.”
“You sang your first Onegin at Juilliard,” I asked Belov. “Did this role take you over?”
“My first teacher, Simeon Tregubov, sang Onegin in Russia 96 times. He told me, ‘be prepared; it’s one of the hardest roles you will ever do.’ Because there is so little you can do to establish his character in the first two acts.”
“Tchaikovsky hated the character of Onegin; he wanted the center of the opera to be Tatyana. Pushkin (whose novel inspired the opera) identified with both Onegin and Lensky, but Tchaikovsky did not. But the last scene with Tatyana was easy—it’s his emotional awakening, and he is so madly in love I could finally let the emotion take me.”
“I like doing character roles better,” says Belov, “being funny is very easy for me.” Belov admits to having been funny as Mozart’s Figaro, Offenbach’s Jupiter and Don Pedro (Moriarty recalls, “He was so hilarious! What a surprise!”) Rossini’s Dandini and Sullivan’s Mikado. He hopes to be funny soon in Il Barbiere. “I also like to be bad,” he says. “I enjoy villains. I want to sing Iago in Otello. Some day—not soon.”
“It’s easier for me to go to that place on the concert stage than in opera. In recital I can select the repertoire and make personal decisions, a personal connection. I’m so glad I won YCA, because now I’m touring the U.S. with ‘Dichterliebe,’ which is like an opera, if you sing it all in one piece with the right key relationships.”
Belov’s personal character was established by his family life in Moscow, steeped in poetry and theater. His father Boris was a distinguished professor, chess coach and poet. His mother Valeria was an English teacher and puppeteer. Young Anton made puppets, sang in school choirs and learned hundreds of pop and folk songs by heart.
In 1991 Valeria went to the U.S. on a cultural exchange visit and to look for medical help for Boris, who had been diagnosed with leukemia. She found a doctor quickly, but the Russian bureaucracy didn’t issue Boris or Anton passports for six months. During that time 16-year-old Anton nursed his bed-ridden father by himself. When the passports came through, Anton went to the American Embassy to get exit visas. The date was August 19th, 1991.
“It was the coup! It was a crazy day. Thousands of people in the streets. Barricades. My father and I left Russia three days later. I didn’t really want to leave. Being a teen-ager in Moscow was so great—it was a time of such change there. I thought, ‘America, what a boring country—everything is always all right.’”
Anton’s father passed away two months after his arrival in the U.S. Anton planned to return to Moscow, but something possessed him. It was love. He had fallen head over heels for Naomi, a daughter of his American hosts. They married and have recently had a daughter, Nadia. “She’s so cute, so wonderful,” says Belov, “a little blonde thing. It’s such a happy time for us now.”
Anton and Naomi began their life together in New Hampshire. They found work on an organic farm in Vermont, and Anton signed on as an apprentice furniture builder. On weekends they wandered the countryside in an ancient VW bus. On one excursion they discovered the Orthodox Church of Holy Resurrection—and a vibrant community of believers in Claremont, New Hampshire. They were drawn into church life.
The rector’s father was Tregubov, a noted baritone and former professor of voice at the Moscow State School of Theater. One day the 90-year-old professor asked Anton to sing for him. The young man’s natural voice impressed Tregubov, who took him on as a pupil and taught him, gratis, for four years. Anton joined the church choir and eventually became choirmaster.
Anton dreamed of entering the Russian Orthodox priesthood; to that end he entered Keene State College to take an undergraduate degree. But music took him over, and he transferred to New England Conservatory of Music.
“Anton was a diamond in the rough when came here; he had never done an opera workshop,” says Weinman. “But the voice was clearly a gift. He learned so fast. He was a joy.”
“The aria class there at NEC with John Moriarty was the best class I ever had,” says Belov. “John taught me everything about preparing arias for auditions. John wanted me to stay on to write a manual of Russian diction and teach a class. But I went to Juilliard.”
“So, what about Russian diction and the Russian school of singing? How do Russians sing those back vowels?”
“I’ve thought about diction a lot. Let me say there is only one back vowel in Russian, the other five vowels are like Italian, AH, Eh, EE, OH, OOH. That strange Russian vowel is actually an altered form of EE and is not in itself unsingable or vocally dangerous. It’s really the Russian consonants that are the hard part; to sing in Russian a singer must learn an entirely new set of consonants that do not occur in other European languages. They are so called soft or palatalized consonants.”
“People tell me I sound more Italian than Russian (he does—his baritone is bright and supple with a close-knit vibrato). Except for my first teacher, I have studied with Americans. I have been with David Clatworthy for three years now. I love him so much. He has been so good for my voice. The whole Juilliard experience has been wonderful. I have more of a Russian-American style. I’m not really sure there is a fundamental difference between styles; if you hear re-masters of the early wax cylinder recordings of Russian singers such as the great tenor Sobinov, they all sound like Italians.” (note: Russian classical singing does have Italian influences, at least in St. Petersburg. Giovanni Paisiello was composer in residence at the Court of Catherine the Great from 1776-1784, composing his Barber of Seville and other operas there. Of course Italian singers were hired to sing them.)
Yes, but what about those incredible Russian basses?” I asked.
“You know about octavists? Not activists, octavists! The church basses that sing an octave below the low basses, I mean an octave below low F! Russia seems to breed basses like this. I asked one of those guys how it was done. He said he didn’t know, but he showed me. I don’t know if it’s healthy.”
“What singers do you listen to?”
“I love all the classic singers. I listen to Di Stefano and Gigli. Baritones can learn a lot from tenors. On the other end, there is (Alexander) Kipnis and (Feodor) Chaliapin, the great Russian basses. I really really love Robert Merrill and Tito Gobbi. And the Big Pav, Pavarotti. There’s no replacement for Fischer-Dieskau. I love Hans Hotter and Friz Wunderlich.”
“When Naomi and I came to Boston, we were so poor. I bought an old LP turntable for $20, and there’s this used record store near the Conservatory—they sold the old opera boxes for 50 cents. I bought about 60. The Un Ballo in Maschera with Ettore Bastianini, Callas and Di Stefano is the best opera recording ever made.”
“What do you do when you’re not singing or being a family man?”
“Three things. Number one: chess. My dad was a chess player. I play on the Internet. Two: fishing, ocean fishing. In Boston I used to fish off a dock in the harbor. Three: woodworking. I have a table and other things I made. I’d like to set up a shop and do more.”
“Do you still think about going into to the priesthood some day?”
“Honestly, yes. My wife would trade being a musician’s wife for being a priest’s wife any day” (Russian Orthodox priests may marry).
“Because you are home all the time?”
“Yes! We hate being apart. You know, I’m still directing a church choir on Long Island. My pay is—a house! A nice four-bedroom house.
“And your favorite song composers?”
“My favorite composer is Folk!”
“Who?”
“Folk songs! There is a Russian song, ‘Nochenka,’ ‘Dark Night.’ Chaliapin used to sing it. It is so honest, so simple, it touches everybody’s heart. It’s one of the first songs I ever learned. I always sing it as an encore.”
“I love Mussorgsky, because his roots are folk. And Gretchaninov. People don’t sing him, and they should. The Schumann song cycles. I’m touring with ‘Dichterliebe’ now. I love (Dichterliebe poet Heinrich) Heine, because he has folk roots, too. I’m learning Spanish music—Granados, Obradors—and doing Spanish diction with Nico Castel.”
“Do you think about going back to Russia to sing?”
“I went back on a visit two years ago. I could barely recognize my city. Russia is another country now. I would like to sing there but not live there right now.
“I’m a citizen now; my wife and baby are Americans. I think in English! After all, I was 16 when I came here. There is so much freedom here, and Americans—they’re so kind of laid-back, even New Yorkers. People are so accepting. They say, ‘You’re a Russian? Let me shake your hand. I never touched a real Russian before!’ But I’m an American!”
